Amnay Read online

  She decided he was right. The Menin would treat their home as it deserved to be treated. Even though she knew they killed indiscriminately across the rest of the galaxy. It wasn't the first time she had sensed such a dichotomy in this race, and it would be far from the last.

  She thought the Menin strange. But the Menin, if they ever cared to take a closer look at humankind, would come away with a similar but perhaps less favorable opinion.

  "You don't know your birthplace," Kozue said. "But your entire race can't live on this one ship. It's big, don't get me wrong..." Unconsciously, she glanced downward along his body. "But I don't see how it could sustain a large enough group of Menin to provide proper genetic diversity. And after all we read earlier, about nearly going extinct... And what you said, about humans needing to leave Earth..."

  We live elsewhere," said Amnay. "When we find a planet that we could survive on, we stop for a little while. Ten percent of our breeding pairs are chosen to stay behind. Sometimes the colonies die out. But usually they thrive. The largest and earliest of them number in the millions now. And the rest of us continue on. Without fault, we all wish more than anything that we are not chosen to pioneer a new colony. Our preferred way of life has always been the exploration and conquest of new places. I assume we must have been that way even on our homeworld."

  Kozue nodded. "Humans are like that, too. It's the only reason we ever embarked on space exploration in the first place."

  He bopped her lightly on the nose with his finger. "That spirit will save you. Humans would do well to weed out those who do not have the spirit. Or at least to forbid them from breeding."

  "It's not that simple, Amnay. Not everyone can be an explorer and a conqueror. Some people need to stay behind and, you know, take care of the home base."

  He nodded thoughtfully. "Like the colonists."

  "Just like the colonists, yes."

  "But they did not choose to stay behind. They were forced against their will. If they actually want to do it, that means there is something wrong with them. And they can't be trusted to do the job properly."

  Kozue broke into a fit of laughter. Amnay looked at her with concern as her face turned red and tears spilled from her eyes.

  "I didn't mean to be humorous," he said.

  She wiped her eyes and said, "It just sounded like you were talking about politicians."

  He stared at her a moment, then said, "Tomorrow, you can tell me what politicians are."

  Chapter Four

  Kozue woke up. She felt Amnay's floor bed, surprisingly comfortable, underneath her. But he wasn't there with her. She reached out, eyelids still drooping, and felt around. The bed was empty. She found herself missing him, wishing he was there to hold her and touch her, before she realized what her feelings meant.

  That scared her, more than anything else that had happened these past few days.

  Before this moment, she had gotten by with telling herself he was just nice to be around. Why not take a few pleasures along the way? He had strong hands, and it felt good when he touched her.

  But now, she had to face the fact she was starting to develop real feelings for him. For an alien, someone who wasn't even a member of her species.

  She couldn't let this go any further.

  It was time to get back to work. Obtaining information and learning all she could about the Menin served her own private curiosities. And it helped, also, with the job she had actually come here to do. The job which the US Army had spent billions of dollars on, with collaboration from ten other world powers. India, China, Russia, Brazil, Argentina, the European Union, and others all had a stake in this. But really, this matter concerned every single country and every single human on Earth.

  That job, which she had been given quite against her will, was to act as an emissary. It was a job she had done many times before. But this time, she had to put in the performance of a lifetime. It was the most important thing she or any other person in her field of work had ever done.

  It was time to get serious. First off, she had to find a way to regroup with the others. The Menin may only have had carnal pleasures in mind when separating the women. But the effect was that their powers were diminished by more than the sum of their parts. Together, they were a team with a job and the means to complete it. Separated, they were scattered fragments bobbing unpredictably along on a tide of confusion and fear. It was all they could do to assimilate and to survive. They could do nothing more.

  "Amnay?" Kozue called, sitting up. "I have to—"

  He was there, sitting by the door and reading. He looked up, a sly smile growing on his face.

  She had stopped talking, because something she saw had stunned her.

  The room, it seemed, had grown in the night. It was twice as big. An entire wall had been knocked down, the addition sprawling beyond it.

  Kozue stood and slowly walked over.

  The addition must have been there all along; the wall had simply been covering it. Because it looked lived in. There was a bed, unmade and messy. There were food trays and shelves full of books of the same type as Kozue and Amnay had read yesterday in the library.

  To her, it looked like the bedroom of a nerdy and slovenly teenager. But a teenager of another race, entirely.

  She approached the addition, moving to cross the threshold into it.

  But Amnay was suddenly beside her. He caught her and pulled her into him. He was naked; she felt his warm, stiff manhood trailing down her lower back and across her buttocks. It distracted her thoroughly.

  "Don't touch," he said. "Only look."

  Pulling her with him, he took a step left and then two steps right. The scene before them, of the additional room, lost its illusion of depth. Kozue realized she was looking at a two-dimensional plane. A screen of some kind.

  "What is it?" she asked.

  "My invention," said Amnay. "The Menin, as proud as invincible as we are, have stagnated in much the same way as humankind. We've lived in the ship for millennia beyond memory, doing the same things. Exploring, conquering. But by now, we should have become something greater. We have it in us to dominate the entire universe, if we are bold enough to keep climbing. I want to facilitate such a thing. I want to teach my fellows that mere survival and numerical growth is not true advancement. And that we are being very wasteful and lazy.

  "To move beyond our current level, we need to create new things. To prove to myself that I could enact such a change, I had to invent something of my own. The result is what you see before you."

  To Kozue, it was just a screen showing a static scene. Earth had similar technology.

  "It's a live image," he said. "That's a real place you're looking at."

  "Where is it?" Kozue asked.

  "My private room. On my own ship. A secret place; no one else can know about it."

  "Your ship?" she asked. "Where is it?"

  "Far away. I left it on an orbital path around the planet where we built our most recent colony. By now it is at least eight light years away."

  "And you didn't clean it before you left?"

  He smiled at her, shrugging. She got the feeling there was something he wasn't telling her.

  "The image is live, as I said. With such a distance, you would expect a delay of many years before the signal reached us. But here, the delay is nonexistent. If someone were to intercept my ship and go inside, we would know immediately."

  "How?" asked Kozue, too deep in disbelief to be impressed. "How is that possible? Have you found a way to transmit through hyperspace? Have you learned to open and harness your own wormholes?"

  "I'm not saying anything until I'm ready," said Amnay. "But it works. It works better than I ever dreamed it would. Now I know that I am capable of changing things. Of beginning the first major renaissance the Menin have seen since the events on that frozen planet, however long ago."

  Kozue stared at him, openmouthed. She could see on his face that he was telling the truth. From what she had already learned
of the Menin, she knew they were not liars.

  In awe, she reached out to touch the screen.

  Again, Amnay stopped her. He grabbed her arm much harder than before, twisting it and pressing it against her side.

  "I told you, do not touch," he hissed in her ear. "It can be dangerous. It's still a work in progress."

  He released her and walked away. She watched him go, sweating and breathing heavily, smoothing out her shirt with furtive hands.

  ***

  Amnay showed her how to work the screen. It was controlled by a small remote control. Small in his hands, anyway. She needed both hands just to hold it; she had to stretch her thumb painfully to reach the buttons.

  There were three buttons on it. The one on the top controlled the screen's power state. When it was off, the wall of the room reappeared. When it was on, the wall seemed to stretch into the distance, allowing a 3D illusion of another place to build itself instantly before her eyes.

  Amnay told her that the other buttons controlled the channels. Like on a television, she decided. Each channel would show a different scene. Amnay told her not touch those buttons; he did not say anything about whether or not other scenes had already been set up.

  "You may wish to lose yourself in the scene for awhile," he told her. "Now you understand how to turn it on."

  He took the remote from her. She watched as he approached the doorway and slid the remote into a small crack in the wall above the frame.

  All this seemed far too theatrical for what was, essentially, a television set. But perhaps, like certain governments on Earth, this society was somewhat science-phobic. Even though they relied heavily on the achievements of past inventors and cartographers of the natural world.

  Chapter Five

  Kozue was frightened. She had lost sight of her mission yet again, lost in the simple routine of her new daily life. Amnay was eternally gentle, patient despite the burning, intense curiosity that never seemed to leave him.

  Yet she was afraid. It took her some time to process that fear and realize that she was afraid for Amnay. He spent more and more time in the room with her. If they went out, the goal was always to reach a place where they could sequester themselves, away from the eyes of the other males. And always they traveled by strange, unused paths.

  Amnay wished to be seen as little as possible. He was a true outcast, and in such a society as this he was almost certainly in some kind of danger. In danger of being exiled, killed, branded as a coward unworthy of spreading his genes.

  It was a terrible injustice. Kozue often looked into his eyes, explored his powerful body with her hands. He deserved much more. He deserved to believe in himself; he was beautiful, he was strong, he was a man who could do whatever he wanted.

  When he wasn't around — an increasingly rare thing — she would sometimes look in the mirror and hate herself. Here she was, lost in an alien place. She didn't even know where her fellow women were, whether they were dead or injured or trapped in a life much worse than hers. And yet all she could think about was Amnay. Despite the fact that he was a pleasant individual, he belonged to the enemy. And he was keeping her from completing her mission.

  She had to get out, but the door was kept locked. She knew by now that the lock was more for Amnay's sake than hers. He didn't wish to keep her prisoner so much as he wished to simply keep her safe. But that didn't matter. Once she put all feeling aside, all sentiment, the basic truth remained; she was trapped.

  On one of her self-hating occasions, as she frowned in the mirror at her flat chest and short legs, the door opened and Amnay came stumbling in as though being chased. She turned to face him, suddenly resolute. This was the last day she would be his concubine. She could see where this was all leading, and she couldn't let it happen. Even though part of her, a large part, wanted it badly.

  "Amnay," she said, taking a step toward him.

  As soon as she got a good look at him, she clamped her mouth shut. Something was wrong.

  She had never seen him visibly frightened. She had only sensed the tension physically, in the way he sometimes held himself or flinched at sudden sounds.

  But now the terror had overtaken him. He looked like a huge child who'd had a bad dream. His eyes were wide, and he was sweating profusely. He began to pace the room. When he reached the bed, he grabbed the end of it and nearly flipped it over. When Kozue shouted at him to stop, he set it back down and collapsed to the floor.

  She ran to him, nestling in the shelter of his lap and arms like a tiny kitten. She nestled her face to his chin. "What's wrong?" she asked. "What is it? Tell me."

  He took out the translator and clapped it violently to the floor. The voice trapped inside it squealed with interference then reeled out a perfectly structured sentence as Amnay answered. "My brother has challenged Slych," he said.

  "What?" asked Kozue. "Wait, you have a brother?"

  "His name is Agron. He was with us when we met you, as one of the five. It seems he was not happy with his human concubine and decided that he wants Slych's."

  Kozue thought back.

  "Tina," she said.

  "That is who Slych took. Now Agron and him will fight. Whoever wins will take the concubines of the other. Agron has a few, but Slych has more. They are scattered across the ship, and he changes them out as he pleases."

  "What's the object of the fight?" Kozue asked, but she thought she already knew the answer.

  "Fight to the death, with blades. It can only be to the death. When a challenge takes place, only the victor will emerge." Amnay stood up, lifting Kozue and setting her on the bed. He stood over her, running his fingers through her black hair the way he did when he was nervous. "Agron is a good fighter. He achieved a high status in Menin society. He is the only reason I was allowed to choose a human concubine. I have never challenged before, and so I never gained a concubine of my own."

  "Is that the only way to get one? To fight?"

  "Other than recently, with the five humans, there is one way to gain a concubine without fighting. When a female child comes of age, she is allowed to choose whom she will belong to. She only gets the choice once and is stuck with whomever she chooses. Until he is challenged and vanquished, and then she will change hands."

  Kozue cringed. "Well, it's a step up from the arranged marriages that some cultures have. At least you get a modicum of choice."

  "It is the way our society works. And it has allowed us to keep the population of the ship from getting too high. But it has never been a societal mechanism that I wish to participate in. And so I never challenged anyone. And I have avoided all the young, eligible females for fear they would choose me. That would put me in a position to be challenged."

  "You could just decline, yes?"

  "In theory. But to decline is to be known as a coward, and there is nothing a Menin hates more than a coward. It is not considered bad form to kill a coward in cold blood. But to me, cowardice would be the preferred option. It would release my concubines, and they would have a second chance to pick their male. A concubine can only be transferred from one male to another in the event of a mutual challenge. But a coward cannot hold concubines."

  Kozue could barely keep up. "It all seems very complicated."

  "No. It is simple and barbaric. And now my brother is in danger. As I said, Slych has many concubines. That means he is a very good fighter. My brother is good, too, but not as good as Slych. I don't think he will win."

  Amnay turned away from Kozue. His fingers tore painfully through a knot in her hair. He nearly turned back to see if she was okay, but his fear and sadness weighed heavily on him. He seemed utterly devoid of energy.

  "If my brother loses," he said, "I won't have time to mourn him. I will be in danger, too. He will not be around to protect me. It may be Slych. He treats his concubines well but is a greedy, violent, and ambitious one. Or it may be someone else. But I am an easy target and you are... beautiful. Someone will challenge me. I will have to either decline and give you
up, or fight and die for the chance to keep you."

  She stood from the bed and put her hands against his sweaty back. "If you decline and release me," she said, "I will just choose to come back to you."

  "Then we would be back to where we are now. Someone would just challenge me again."

  "Is there no limitation on it?"

  "No. None."

  She felt afraid then as well. The best choice, it seemed, was for Amnay to decline any offer. He would live on, and she would at least get to make her own choice. She knew without asking that Amnay had no fighting experience. If he accepted a challenge, especially from this Slych, he would undoubtedly lose.

  "Tell me what to do," she said through a fog of tears. "Tell me what to say to fix this."

  When Amnay didn't answer, she started pounding on his back. Pounding with all her strength. He barely seemed to feel it, and not just because she was too weak to hurt him. He had retreated into himself. He had gone numb and distant.

  Chapter Six

  The day of the challenge came.

  Amnay, who had been silent and morose ever since learning his brother had been stupid enough to challenge Slych, woke Kozue that morning and wordlessly lifted her to her feet.

  Usually she bathed herself, and usually Amnay watched with curious and hungry eyes. But today he bathed her himself, sponging her down and pouring steaming water down her back. It was as though he wanted to enjoy her to the utmost while he had her. It seemed he was playing a cruel joke on himself, getting so close to his concubine before he lost her forever.

  Thankfully, he was too emotionally compromised at the moment to be sexual. He did slide his hands over her nipples, feeling them poke his palms and rebound like springs once his hand was past them. But he did it in the manner of someone appreciating a piece of art.

  Kozue was glad for that. She wouldn't have wanted their first time to also be their last. It was better that they begin to forget each other now. She admittedly still knew little of Menin society, but there seemed no way to get out of the situation they were in. If there was one, she was sure Amnay would have taken it by now. And he wouldn't have been so melancholy. Then again, he did seem the type to hold onto things. To dwell on them for entirely too long.