Alien Prince

The clouds hung low in a cornflower sky the day the last of the Qeteshi matriarchs died. I remember how they grew round-bellied with the wanton rain, and I prayed to the Goddess Ur’Tesh to keep the coming night as warm as possible for our struggling mother. But Ur’Tesh turned a deaf ear to my pleading, and the clouds broke open wide to rain sleet upon our mourning village even as the day star sunk low on the horizon and the tall grass of the plains was sucked back into the dirt.

I held her hand, our matriarch, as she succumbed to the sickness that had claimed all Qeteshi women, one at a time, picking them off like a great beast might prey on weaker ones. The passing of each of them had been a tragedy, but this was different. This was our leader.

Her name was Ramari Ro’quare, and she was a beauty. Even in an illness that had turned her pale skin almost blue, she remained lovely. She was old in years when the sickness befell her, but she had forever maintained her regal air. She was a Queen, and we, her people. Her horns were a fine silver, and they glinted in the waning light like she was wearing a crown. Her mouth was a stern line, but there were lines around it born of years of proffering her warm, ebullient smile. She wore her black hair in thick braids, now flecked with grey and white, and the tribal tattoo across her forehead bespoke her high status. She was a rare bloom, though she had wilted.

I wish she had had a few more cogent moments, wish that as I took her hand, she would have opened her eyes and smiled to see me there beside her. I wish she could have imparted some wisdom to me that I could have taken with me beyond her passing, any scrap of insight into what I should do in the wake of our great loss. But there was nothing like that. I merely crept quietly into her chamber in the spire at the center of our village, took a seat in the chair beside her bed, and held her hand.

It was thinner than I remembered; she was thinner. But then, that was to be expected after nearly two years of fighting for her life against a disease we did not understand. She did not know she was the last of our women: she had lost consciousness when there was still a handful of others, sick but living. But because we focused the full force of what medical care we had available to take care of Ramari, the other women died off before she did. We were a community of beleaguered men, constantly shrouded in sadness. We did not know how to purport ourselves in the grieving of our women.

As the light went out and the rain grew heavy, Ramari Ro’quare drew her last breath. The air in her bedchamber was so still, even the candlelight did not flicker. I sat there beside her in silence for the length of several heartbeats before rising to my feet to speak to the crowd that had gathered outside her door.

“Friends,” I began, my tone low and tremulous, “it is my sad duty to inform you that Ramari Ro’quare, leader of this great tribe, has entered immortality.”

“Is it really over, Calder?” Someone asked. I did not see who, I simply nodded my head. There was an anxious stirring in the crowd as they began to murmur and shake their heads, unsure of what to do next. I had witnessed what I thought was the death of our kind, the end of our species.

“You will lead us in her absence, Calder,” someone else said, “will you not?” But I shook my head and pushed through them all. I needed air, I needed space. I needed to demand answers from the Gods I had served for so long.

“You cannot leave us now,” a third voice protested. Someone grabbed me by the shoulder, and I wheeled around, full of venom for anyone who would obstruct my path. They must have seen the fire in my eyes, because the lot of them fell silent under the weight of my gaze.

“Hear me,” I said, my tone a low rumble in my throat, “and hear me well, for I shall say these words but once: I am not your leader. Your leader is dead. And I hereby relinquish my role as Qulari Priest, and spiritual advisor to the Qeteshi people of my clan. Put whomever you please in power—it does not matter to me now.”

“But Calder—” I pushed past my people, into the great hall to which Ramari’s room was connected, where she so often held audience, and I heard my footsteps echo against the walls as I tromped through. No one followed me; or, if they did, I did not notice them.

I do not recall much after that. I do not recall stopping by my dwelling to collect what few belongings mattered to me, though I must have, for I have them still. I do not remember that first Winternight on my own in the frozen plains outside my village. I have no memory of building a new dwelling for myself on the outskirts of town, far enough away that I could no longer see the glowing orange lights in the windows of the village.

I remember so very little of those early days on my own. Except this: the sharpening of my horns. When the Qet join the Qulari order, their horns are blunted. This is so that someone can see at a glance that they are of the cloth, that they are one with the Gods and Goddesses of the spirit world. In essence, it is how we signal to the rest of society to leave us be. We are not challenged to battle; we are not called upon to fight. We are ourselves blunted. I joined the order when I was very young, and I do not remember what it felt like to have my horns blunted, but I do remember what it felt like to sharpen them again.

Agony, searing agony, from the first moment to the last. It was my final bit of business before I would leave my village, and I remember it with startling clarity. The village was a ghost town that night, with everyone having traveled to the spire to await news of Ramari’s condition. Because she passed as night fell, and because the temperature was quickly dropping to freezing, many of the men decided to spend the night in the spire. That left me free to wander the village at my leisure. So, I let myself into the smithy.

There was a whetstone we used to sharpen everything from knives to swords to arrowheads to sewing needles, and I took a seat at a crude wooden stool next to it. I looked around the quiet room, dim with candlelight, and abandoned by its master, and I waited. I waited for the Goddess Ur’Tesh to tell me why she had not answered my prayers, or for Qi’Toraq, the God of Death, to tell me why he had taken our Ramari. I waited for Khal’Tari, the mother Goddess, to tell me why she had forsaken her only remaining daughter, or for Te’Ovid the All Father, to explain why he had forsaken me, here, now. As is the case so often with these fleet and fickle Gods, no answers came.

Pumping the whetstone with my foot, I got the stone going in a circular motion of increasing speed. Then I bent forward, pressing the blunted nub of my left horn to stone wheel. It rubbed me raw, and I could feel all of it. I gritted my teeth, moving my head back and forth, and saw the sparks fly from the friction. I cried out, a bellowing sound that filled the empty air around me.

I reforged myself in fire that night, and when I lifted my head again, I could feel the pulse of my nerves in the tip of my sharpened horns. And when I peered at my reflection in the rounded belly of a silver shield, I could see that I had cast off the livery of my former life, and I had become someone else entirely. No longer a Qulari priest, but something else: a man who was looking for a fight.

Even at the age of 24—ostensibly well into adulthood—my first thought upon the realization that I’d been abducted by a bunch of intergalactic slavers was, “My parents are going to kill me.” I suppose that’s largely due to the fact that, by said age, a myriad of equally bizarre things had already happened to me, and I had been trained through trial and error not to expect any truly dire outcomes. Not when my parents held high offices in The Echelon, an organization that had their fingers in every pie in the known universe. Whenever I got into any sort of trouble, I guess I figured that they’d know, and that they’d come find me. And getting abducted was no different.

Or so I originally thought.

I guess you could make an argument for the fact that I’d put myself in somewhat of a vulnerable position in the first place. Home was the Atria, Federation Ship 4199, and my neighborhood tended to be somewhere in the vast black between star systems. Although I was human, I’d never set foot on earth, not once. I wasn’t even born there: I was born on the Atria, and it often felt like I would die there, too. I spent many countless evenings scrolling through images of what it looked like one Earth, images of beaches and cities, mountains and forests, deserts and volcanoes. But mostly, I looked at other people. There were humans aboard the Atria even aside from my parents and myself, but not many, and very few my own age. I wanted to know what it would be like to live a normal life, on a normal planet. I watched human television shows and movies just to feel like I could be around nice, normal people who didn’t know that this organization even existed. What bliss it must be, I thought, to think you were alone in the universe.

When I was growing up, none of it seemed so strange. I had friends of a multitude of species, and we went to school together aboard the Atria. Using in-ear translation devices, we could exist peacefully if not warmly side by side, speaking the language of our people without losing out on understanding one another. But because there were so few humans, I always felt like I was left out, even with the translation device. So, I began to learn languages. I learned Europax, Pyrtas, Qeteshi, Keldeeri, language after language, until I didn’t feel so strange.

And I was an adept pupil. My teachers consistently remarked upon my ability to pick things up with startling quickness, and as such, my parents had big plans for me. A position within the Echelon itself, just as they had.

I had done everything my parents had asked of me. I studied languages, and could speak 17 different ones, five of them were Earth languages, and the other 12 were languages from the planets with which the Echelon had the most contact. But instead of that grand diplomatic position my parents wanted for me, I was working in intergalactic customer service. And I wasn’t even the person who solved problems; I was just on the phones, connected them to the people who could.

I began to wonder constantly if perhaps I could just…decide to leave the Atria. If my parents would help me get set up on earth. They loved me, after all. I knew they only wanted the best for me. Finally, a few months before my 25th birthday, I decided to test the waters.

Even though I had my own living quarters aboard the Atria, they were nothing compared to the spacious suite my parents shared. The suite featured picture windows overlooking the sparkling expanse of endless space, with plush white carpeting in the sunken sitting area. The furniture was sleek and modern, but there was a crystal chandelier that hung over the living room, and it boasted a white baby grand piano that nobody played.

Keenly aware of the interest I had taken in Earth and its cultures, my mother made a point of cooking a home-cooked “American” meal for me once a week. And that week when I walked in, there was a friendly fire burning warmly in the fireplace at the far end of one room.

“Hi, peanut,” my father said, smiling under the bush of his thick, greying moustache. He pressed a kiss to my forehead and shuffled past me with his tablet in one hand and a half-empty beer bottle in the other.

“Hi, Dad,” I said to him as he passed.

“Is that Lore?” My mother called from the kitchen, and my father confirmed her suspicion. Mom popped her head out of the kitchen and proffered a broad smile.

“Hi, honey! I’m making pot roast.” Even at nearly 60 years old, my mother was still a beauty. She had deep dimples around her full lips when she smiled, and her eyes were a glittering green. Before she’d begun to go grey, she had hair black as spilled ink, and I’d inherited it from her. Though mine curled like my father’s, it was still black as pitch. My eyes were my mother’s, green and bright, and my mouth was hers as well, though my dimples were not as pronounced. But where my mother was a reed, graceful and slight, I was curved like a piece of exotic fruit. From my father’s mother, I imagine: she had been short and stout and very Italian.

I reflected my mother’s smile and headed over to join her in the kitchen, but she caught me in a hug first. The room smelled of roasting meat and simmering vegetables, and with my back to the windows, I could almost pretend like I was any other normal person, having a normal dinner, with her normal parents.

“How’s it goin’, Mama?” I asked, trailing my fingers over the granite countertops.

“Oh, fine,” she said, untying the strings of her apron. “Except that the Europax contingent is placing sanctions against the Keldeeri, and so your father and I are trying to negotiate against an impending embargo.” So much for normal.

“Yikes,” I said.

“Yikes is right.”

“What do the Keldeeri want?” I asked, crossing my arms in front of me.

“Women,” she said. “Either human or Europax.”

“Jeez,” I muttered under my breath, “Not another planet whose women are dying off?”

“No, no,” My mother said, sliding in socked feet across the kitchen tile and throwing open the refrigerator. “That’s why the Europax don’t want to cooperate. It’s not like Qetesh—the Keldeeri have plenty of females. They want the Europax for, er…sport.”

“You can say ‘brothels’, Mom.”

“Well, whatever.” She bent at the waist and procured a bottle of Chardonnay, holding it aloft with a beaming smile. “Look!”

“Oooh,” I cooed, and stepped forward to take the bottle from her, peering down at the label. “Is this a good year?”

“I have no idea. But beggars can’t be choosers.” Mom got us a few glasses, and I rifled through a nearby drawer to find the wine key. Popping open the bottle, I poured us two sizable servings, and we clinked our glasses together. They only had shipments from earth once a month and the supplies were always picked clean with a quickness. I sipped; I reveled in the sharp flavor of the wine.

“So,” I said, setting my glass down on the countertop, “there is something I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Oh?” her tone was dubious.

“Yeah, um.” I cleared my throat. “I want to go to Earth.”

My mother’s face was utterly unreadable as she lifted her glass to her lips and drank deeply of her wine. “Mm,” she hummed, giving a slow nod of her head.

“So…” I continued, jutting my hip out as I fell into an easy lean against the counter, “is that something that you guys could, like…help me with?”

She canted her head gently to the side, then turned her gaze toward the empty doorway just past me and shouted, “Jack!” She called his name a few more times before my father came shuffling into the kitchen, his eyebrows arched high over his shrewd eyes. “Your daughter wants to go to Earth.”

He furrowed his brow and eyed me curiously. “Earth,” he repeated, as though it were a strange request. “What does she want to do that for?”

“I haven’t the faintest notion,” my mother said, cradling her half-empty wine glass in her left hand.

I looked between them, knowing that I would meet some resistance but finding it baffling that they should be surprised in the slightest. “What?” I asked, unable to discern what their oblique expressions could mean. “You can’t think it’s weird that I would want to.”

“No, I suppose we always knew this day would come,” my father said, making his way to the fridge to grab himself another beer. “I guess I just assumed it would be later.”

“Later, like when?” I asked, watching him use the side of the granite countertop to pop the bottle cap from his beer. I blinked owlishly, surprised that my mother didn’t have some words of admonishment for him to use her countertops in such a manner, but her attention was focused heavily on me.

“Like when you wanted to settle down and have a family of your own,” she said gently. “We know that there isn’t exactly a ton of choices in the eligible human male department.”

“Not that we’re saying we wouldn’t approve of your joining with a member of another species. We’re progressive, forward-thinking types.”

“But,” my mother interjected, “we know how special it is to have a child. A daughter. We wouldn’t want you to deprive yourself of that.”

“Some species support cross-breeding, Cora, you know that,” my dad muttered under his breath.

“But that isn’t the point,” she shot back conspiratorially, evoking from him a nod of concession.

“What is the point?” I asked, finishing off the wine in my glass and propping my hands up on my hips as I stared at my parents from across the kitchen island.

“The point,” my father said at length, “is that we are still very early in our cross-breeding phase. We know that pairings could create viable half-breed offspring, but we don’t necessarily know if they will.”

“Or if they should,” my mother added.

“Well, but the Echelon is sending all those human and Europax women to Qetesh. I just assumed—”

“It’s really only phase one,” Dad said. “Just to see if we can correct a trend before an entire species dies off.”

I nodded, though I couldn’t shake the notion that they were both putting the proverbial cart way before the proverbial horse. “Well,” I said at length, “I not looking to settle down, so to speak. But I do want…”

“What?” My mother urged.

“I don’t know. Something else.” I picked absently at my nail beds, and I did not look at them. “Something more…normal.”

My father chuckled low in his throat, and I heard my mother sigh through her nostrils. Jack and Cora Vauss were an impenetrable wall when they were united, which they usually were. “Normal,” my father repeated, like he was turning the word over in his mouth to have a better understanding of it. “What does that even mean?”

“More like other people,” My mom said, and there was an edge to her tone that put me on edge as well.

“I’m not passing judgement or anything,” I said quickly, “I just want to try another kind of life, that’s all.”

“What’s so wrong with the one we’ve given you?” Mom asked, and that was where I lost them.

“Nothing,” I said, even as I watched my mom turn her attention to the oven and her pot roast. She slipped her hands into her oven mitts and opened the oven door, sending a plume of hot air into the kitchen. “Nothing is wrong with it; I just want something else.”

“You’re like the little mermaid,” my dad said, and I quirked a brow. “Yeah, you live in this magical underwater kingdom that most little girls would kill to be a part of, and all you want to do is live on the shore like, like…like some typical human.”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, exactly!” Mom took the pot roast out and let it cool on the top of the stove.

“Well, it’s done,” she said, “but it looks kind of disgusting. We have some Keldeeri hash that we froze, we could just—”

“No, I don’t want any Keldeeri food or Europax food or…or any of that crap. I just want normal people food. I want the disgusting pot roast, all right?” I hadn’t meant to raise my voice, but I had. And my mother put her hands up defensively in front of her, still wearing the pair of ridiculous red polka dot oven mitts. Then she exited into the dining room to set the table, and I was left alone with Dad, who was chewing contemplatively at his lower lip.

“Listen, pea,” he said, invoking my childhood nickname, “it’s not that we don’t want to give you what you want, it’s just that permanent settlement anywhere off the Atria takes a long time. You have to be coached, prepared. It’s a months-long process and the chances of us seeing each other once you leave the Atria are very slim.”

“Why?” I asked, suddenly wide-eyed.

“Because the Atria doesn’t spend much time anywhere near Earth. Human technology is too advanced, actually. They can spot us too quickly nowadays.”

He pursed his lips in a thin smile before turning on his socked heel to head into the dining room, leaving me there alone with the steaming pot roast. I didn’t bring the subject up again while we were eating. I let them believe I’d dropped the whole thing, let them ask me about work, about my friends, about how I liked my new living quarters. I talked to them about their research, about their work with the Echelon, how the human and Europax placements on Qetesh had been going, and everything just sort of got back to normal.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I could have my cake and eat it, too. If I could somehow get aboard the transport vessel that made its monthly trek to earth for supplies, I could go there for a month-long vacation, and be back aboard the Atria before they’d written me off for dead. I would leave a note for my parents to let them know not to worry, and that would be it. Easy, if slightly deceptive. I knew that the transport vessel had only recently arrived, given the Chardonnay, so if I worked fast, I could be on Earth any day now.

The whole business of figuring out which ship in the hangar bay was the transport vessel (the large one that looked like a giant box) and ascertaining whether or not it had life support (it did, it came standard) and whether or not it would have a manned crew (It would) was a fairly simple one. And, even better, the captain of the transport ship was a Europax pilot I’d grown up with: Teldara Kinesse. She was tall and slender, with long graceful limbs and skin the color of cafe au lait. She wore her hair in a tapered bob that ended in a sharp point at her chin and was longer in the front than it was in the back. With this hairstyle, she could pass for human: her earless-ness was hidden, and she was only six feet tall—short, by Europaxian standards.

In any event, I waited on the scaffolding until I saw Teldara crossing toward the transport ship with her personal gear slung over her shoulder, by way of an overstuffed duffle bag. She was wearing a fitted black jumpsuit and combat boots, and I could see the glint off the delicate jewel in her nose even from afar. I darted down the metal stairs and across the floor of the hangar bay until I caught up with her, tapping her on the shoulder even as she hauled her duffle bag into the cargo hold.

“Hi!” I said, beaming up at Tel from half a foot beneath her.

She inclined her head somewhat, then arched one thin brow high over a glinting blue eye. “Hi…” she responded, her tone as dubious as her expression.

“How are you?” I asked, all smiles and sunshine.

“All right, what do you want?” Tel crossed her arms beneath her breasts and stared sternly down at me, though her look was not without a hint of playfulness.

“Why do you automatically assume that I want something?” I asked, full of feigned innocence.

“Because I have never once in my life seen you in the hangar bay, and I know by now that when any one of my shifty school friends turns up it’s because they want me to score them something from the shipment, or they want me to deliver something shady, or they want me to smuggle them off the Atria.” She looked at me, and something in my expression must have given me away, because she groaned audibly and slapped her palms against her upper thighs. “You want me to smuggle you off the Atria?”

“Smuggle is such a strong word,” I said, even as Tel turned around to attend to her bag. “It’s more that I want you to…give me a lift.”

“Um, let me think…. No.”

Teldara shouldered past me, and I followed close on her heels as she headed out of the hangar bay. “Just hear me out,” I said, struggling to keep up with her long strides.

“Lore, you are always trying to get me into trouble,” she said, and I could see the corner of her mouth hook up in a smile.

“When have I ever—”

“That time we went to Europa for spring break, and got drunk on that stuff…Oh, what was it called…?”

“Larandi wine!” I said, smiling at the memory. “Nectar of the Gods, I swear.”

“Yeah, it was delicious—”

“See?” I interjected, “we have fun.”

“Until we stumbled onto the Keldeeri embassy, and they nearly took our heads off.” Tel pushed through a door at the far end of the hangar bay, and we were admitted into a bustling corridor, full of merchants and military, coming and going from the ships they’d docked in the Atria’s Hangar C.

“It was just a misunderstanding,” I asserted. “And we still have our heads. No harm, no foul.”

We rounded the corner and made our way toward the lift that would take us back to the heart of the Atria. But before we could, Tel rounded on me, standing in front of me and forcing me to stop moving abruptly lest I run square into her. “Tell me this,” she said, crossing her arms in front of her as she peered down at me, “why do you want to go to Earth?”

“Because,” I began, and tried to make myself a little taller, “I want to know what it’s like to have a normal human life. And when I asked my family about it, they told me that if I moved there permanently, I would never see them again. I couldn’t live with myself if I just…cut my parents out of my life. And I don’t want to make a rash decision about up and moving to Earth before I’ve even seen it.”

“Yeah,” she begrudgingly conceded, “what if it’s awful?”

“Exactly. What if it’s awful? So I just want to check it out a little. I thought, if I could travel aboard the transport vessel, I could just see a little bit of it, and come back. Maybe sate my curiosity.” She was nodding; I had hooked her. “And hey, what if I help you out a little, huh? I know your job is to load the transport vessel, so I could do some manual labor for you. Make it a little easier. What do you say?”

Her nostrils flared as she exhaled sharply through them, and I could see the wheels turning in her mind as she considered my proposition. People of all different shapes, colors, and sizes were filing past us in both directions; we were the only still creatures in a hive of activity.

“Well,” she said at length, “I haven’t really seen any of Earth, the two times I’ve flown out there.”

“See? And now you’ll have an excuse to do a little sightseeing while you’re there! It’ll be fun, like spring break all over again.”

“Except without ending up with automatic laser rifles pointed at us.”

“Except for that.”

And thus, we had an accord. And it was great, actually, in the days preceding the launch. We would have dinner or drinks every night and talk about the things we wanted to do or see when we were on Earth, with our tablets on the table between us as we scrolled through images and articles about the things to do and see. We were landing in the middle of the ocean, whereupon the spaceship would disguise itself as a water ship, and we’d end up somewhere in a place called Florida, which looked pretty nice, all things considered. Lots of palm trees and beaches. I couldn’t wait.

The plan was that Tel would list me as a labor hand on the ship roster, and she’d have me sneak on board the night before launch, and that would be that. We’d be en route before anyone became aware that I was somewhere I shouldn’t be, but they wouldn’t halt the mission for one inconsequential stowaway, so I’d be allowed to go on with the ship and I’d face a slap on the wrist when I got back. Free and easy.

Except that’s never how things work out, is it?