amaryllis_019-6e3.htm Page 10

  Punching in the codes, Reve ordered his favorite foods and hoped she would enjoy the same. It seemed, for a reason he could not fathom, he wanted to please this Earth woman. The items he ordered came through and he took them to where she now sat on one of the couches. She was peering at the armrest and searching with her fingers, without result, for the table.

  "Here, I will get it for you." He released the catch with his toe and then bent to show her how to find the lever. "You simply activate the mechanism with a slight tap here. You see."

  "Right, thank you. You have very little furniture cluttering up your home," she said as he placed the platter beside her.

  "Why would you need articles other than a place to sit, to lie and to put your food?"

  "Good point, but we have bits and pieces scattered about, just to make the house look cozier, I guess. On the subject, do you have a cleaning lady?" Her glance flicked about the space.

  "Cleaning lady?" he asked, amused. "I see. A person to do the housework." He ignored her scowl. "We have no dust particles on Amaryllis, no dirt, as you call it."

  "Wow! Imagine. You mean to say no one ever goes around with a vacuum cleaner or duster?"

  Reading her thought patterns, he laughed when he saw the various machines and tools she spoke of. "The robots come in periodically to inspect for signs of deterioration. My parents have a greater problem, as they keep birds within their home. The robots fumigate and remove waste from these creatures."

  "My word! I wouldn’t mind taking one of those robots home with me," she said.

  At her reminder this was to be a short visit, a strange feeling he took to be disappointment touched him.

  "You would not have the facilities for re-programming that has to be carried out on them. What you would call re-charging. Now eat."

  "Mmm, it looks nice." She touched her finger to the dish made of capir meat and crum.

  "It’s similar to what you had before, but I think you will find this tastier. The red fruit is milews. Ah, they remind you of a strawberry, I see." Releasing his own table he saw she wasn’t too pleased with him reading her thoughts again.

  Reve shrugged. "I cannot keep apologizing."

  "I guess not," she said.

  "In time you will get so acquainted with it and you will treat it as naturally as we do." As he said the words he wondered if she would be here long enough to get so acquainted with their ways. The thought she might not sent another strange shaft of dismay through him. He shook his head.

  "This pie is delicious."

  Something deep inside him tightened as she bit into the capir pie with her very white and straight teeth. Desire. And something else most strange. More and more he was experiencing sensations unknown to him. Could it be some of this woman’s alien ways and emotions were being transmitted to him? Or perhaps along with her husband’s image he had acquired a small touch of the Earthman’s emotions.

  "Tell me about your partner, this Chris I resemble," he urged as they ate.

  Her eyes grew troubled as she reached for her glass of graw juice. "Chris was a hard worker, a diligent cop. That’s a law enforcement officer, in case you don’t know what the word means. He was working undercover. It means he was pretending to be something other than a police officer. He and Pete were onto this drug baron."

  "I know all this. You explained as much before. Tell me more of the man himself. I wish to know personal details. What was he like to live with?" Changing feelings ran across her face. This was so unique. No Amaryllisan ever allowed their innermost emotions to show. Perhaps because they could read each other’s thought patterns so easily, the ability had been erased from their characters long ago.

  She began to nibble on her bottom lip again and then she licked it. His body reacted instantly, and he quelled the rampant desire to reach across and repeat the kissing experiment. Crossing his legs he concealed his aroused state from her soft eyes as she put her glass down and gazed across the space separating them with a look he could swear matched the heat searing him.

  "Chris wanted to protect me from all the bad things in life." Her shoulders hunched, as her eyes grew sad. "Which was really silly. It was impossible. He thought by wrapping me in cotton wool, I would be safe."

  "Cotton wool?"

  "Mmm, this means coddling. Sort of putting a protective shield about me," she explained. "I was alone in the world when I met him. Had been out there on my own since running away from the last foster home. You remember I told you about the awful man who wanted to interfere with me."

  Reve nodded, not interrupting her flow of speech now she had begun to tell him all the facts.

  "Now I come to think about it, although I feel like a traitor for saying it, I married Chris more to escape the loneliness in my life than anything else. Not that I didn’t think him a wonderful person. Now I’m alone again." Tears collected at the corners of her eyes and she wiped them away with her fingers.

  "You are not alone. You have me," he said quietly and the look she sent him was filled with a kind of sadness he couldn’t define. It was as if she wanted something with desperation, but knew it was just out of her reach.

  "That’s kind of you to say so, Reve, but when I return home, I’ll be alone again."

  Her words sounded so final and a feeling he had no recollection of experiencing before attacked him. For a moment he considered telling her he had no intention of allowing her to return to Earth any time in the near future. But he quelled the idea.

  Picking up the plate of food, she began to eat. She hesitated for a while. "Chris was gentle and kind, and I miss him terribly. He’s the only person I ever loved."

  "This love plays an important part in life on Earth, does it not?" Reve felt a distinct pang of something he didn’t fully recognize. Something he didn’t like at all. For an instant he felt murderous towards a man who was dead. Immature!

  "Tell me what this emotion is exactly."

  "Explain love? You have to be joking." Her head went to one side and he saw the tears had dried.

  "I do not joke. It is out of my scope of understanding. I can desire a woman, want her as my partner in life, even impregnate her with the one child I am allowed to give her in my lifetime, but this emotion you speak of is out of my comprehension."

  "One child in a lifetime?" She ignored the rest of his speech and focused on the one item that seemed to intrigue her.

  "Yes. If we had many children as you obviously do on Earth our planet would be seriously over populated within a megnum. We can choose the sex of the child, but we must have a balance. If too many males are born within any one set period of what you would call a year, then the female must accept a female child."

  "My goodness! How do you manage to pick whether you have a boy or a girl?" Her voice elevated with interest.

  "It is a simple matter of injecting a substance called…let me see. I’m sorry I cannot translate this in any shape you would understand. Suffice it to say, this is put into the womb a few hours after conception."

  "Oh my, and how do you know for sure the woman has conceived?"

  "We are an advanced society. We know." He didn’t wish to go into details of how the tips of the woman’s breast glands changed color and became larger.

  He could see she yearned to inquire further, but her mind told her to retreat as they were getting into what she considered dangerous territory. He stifled a smile.

  "Have you had your allowed one?" she asked instead.

  "No, Irena did not wish for a child yet." Turning to put his glass down, he hid his small grimace from her. It was doubtful if Irena would have ever been ready to breed. She was altogether too ambitious, too intent on furthering her career as an inter-galactic observer. And look where that had landed her. Dead in her prime. There was no reason why she couldn’t have borne a child and then returned to her career. He sighed; Irena had wanted nothing to stand in the way of her ambitions.

  The sudden thought that he would like to impregnate this woman before him with a
child startled him. "I presume you have not given birth to this Chris’s child yet?"

  Tears misted her eyes again as she shook her head. "We weren’t married very long. He wanted to wait a while. I would have loved a baby though. Now it’s too late." A shuddery sigh trembled through her.

  "I will give you this baby you desire."

  Reve cursed to the Great Bodka. Where had this foolish statement sprung from?

  Her cheeks were flushed again. "What sort of baby would we have together? I wonder. You’re an alien." The thought seemed to amuse her. Her statement angered him.

  "You are right. I am an alien. But you are no less so in my eyes." Of course she was right. It was unthinkable. Even so, he would delve into the archives and see if the Earth person who had come to Amaryllis megnums ago had bred successfully." He rose. "Come, we will go to meet my parents."

  "Do they live far away?" she asked as he dealt with the empty plates and glasses.

  "No, they live and work in this city. Gawayn, my father, is commander in charge of training pilots, and Althea is head of the training establishment for the final year students." Reve ushered her through the door, and slipped his feet onto the skiboard. Then he placed hers down for her. "Can you manage?"

  "I’m fine." She proved it by placing her feet perfectly. "Won’t they be at work at this time of the day?"

  "They are both at home."

  "How do you know? I noticed you have no clocks. How do you know what time of the day it is?"

  "We have no need of time measurers. I can reach my mother simply by speaking to her by what you would call thought transference. They are expecting us."

  "Oh my. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this telepathy business, Reve." She shook her head and then they propelled the skis into motion.

  ~ * ~

  "Most things become normal if you practice them often enough," Reve was saying about telepathy as they traveled along to his parents’ housing.

  Melanie guessed he was right. Hadn’t she become used to him and his home in a remarkably short space of time? If someone had told her a week ago she would soon be on a far planet and having erotic dreams about a handsome alien, she would have laughed in their face.

  They traveled along wider corridors now, more like motorways with a median strip down the middle. All the buildings seemed the same. Symmetrical and about two or three stories high. There were no windows, except in the vaulted roof. Beside each door, alongside the panel of buttons used to operate the doors, was a small plaque.

  "Yes, they tell the name and business of the inhabitant," he said.

  Did he have to keep doing that? His small shrug told her it was something she would have to get used to. Telepathy was a fact of life up here. What was the point of getting all in a flap about something she couldn’t change?

  "Exactly," he agreed. Her expression made him smile. At least she amused him, which was something. While he was laughing at her, he wasn’t so stern and enigmatic.

  Here and there giant artificial shrubs sat on the median strip. Some were like spidery ferns, a few like strips of silver paper. They weren’t needed for shade, so must have been there to break the monotony of the austere scenery. Not that they did a lot to liven up the avenues. The uncluttered look took some getting used to.

  "Our routes seem strange to you?" he asked. "Ah, they are so different to your traveling corridors."

  "That’s the biggest understatement ever. You should see our main roads and freeways in the rush hour."

  "Rush hour?"

  "When everyone is out driving, either going home from their jobs or going out for the evening. The roads become congested and tempers sometimes become frayed." Another understatement. "Road rage is rampant. I saw a guy a few weeks back actually break someone’s windscreen with a bat, simply because this other guy had cut in on him at the traffic lights."

  "Don’t you find this much more pleasing? Amaryllisans are calm and orderly."

  Too damn orderly. It wasn’t natural to be so sedate and unruffled. "Doesn’t anyone ever feel like throwing a punch?" He shook his head, his sidelong glance telling her how uncivilized such a thing would be.

  These civilized Amaryllisans went about their pursuits, very serious and intent on the business at hand, and ignored Melanie and Reve. It still puzzled her how they all looked so alike.

  Reve halted her with a hand on her arm. They came to a stop in front of one of the doors.

  "Reve," she said as they removed the skis and put them in the slots.

  "Yes, what is it, Mel-aanie? Something is bothering you? Ah, I see."

  "You really have no need for speech up here, do you? You just go about reading each other’s heads. It’s a wonder you aren’t all dumb."

  His massive shoulders lifted indolently. "I cannot help it if we are an advanced culture and Earth is light years behind in intelligence, now can I?"

  "Now just a minute, mister." Melanie prodded his chest. "Don’t you go denigrating me just because we haven’t mastered thought transference yet on Earth. We aren’t a bunch of idiots, you know."

  "I did not infer you were."

  "Oh no, you harp on about us being way behind you in everything."

  "It is a fact, one that cannot be changed." He tapped out a code on the panel and the door slid back. "As for your interest in our appearance, I will explain it to you later. Let us go in now." With his firm hand on her back, he ushered her inside.

  Ten

  Melanie gasped as she looked about his parents’ home. "This is splendid." She bent close to whisper near his ear. "Outside, your buildings might be plain and stark, but inside you certainly go in for extravagant landscaping and decorating."

  Instead of the tiered flower boxes in Reve’s place, this great hall had an aviary going from the floor to the ceiling. Exotic and unusual birds of many shapes and sizes flew about or rested on brightly colored plants. Some were dainty and more like large butterflies. Some reminded her of peacocks, with iridescent plumes. The whole scene was a treat for the eyes.

  "You are pleased with the bird house."

  "Oh yes, it’s wonderful." She moved nearer to inspect the creatures. Up close their feathers were more like soft pelts--colors changing as they moved, deepening or lightening as they caught the shafts of light coming in from the roof. "We call this an aviary."

  "We have no land animals on Amaryllis, Mel-aanie, except the birds, as you’ve probably realized. The capir are ugly and are bred for food only, but my parents have a pair of all the breeds of flying creatures here." His waved hand encompassed the aviary. "My father likes to experiment with breeding new strains. I will take you beneath the water soon and then you will get to see our many types of magnificent sea creatures too."

  "They’re beautiful," she agreed. "Even our most exotic birds on Earth don’t match up to these for color."

  "Do not put your finger near the cage," he ordered suddenly as Melanie went to press her hand on the mesh. "They could carry a virus that might prove fatal to you. It is best not to take chances. Most are harmless, but we have one or two in there not fully studied yet." He turned away, but enfolded her hand in his, warm and strong around hers, which felt small cradled there.

  A silver-haired woman emerged from beneath an archway at the rear of the hall.

  "Ah, here you are, mother." He let Melanie’s hand go and went to touch palms with his mother. "Mel-aanie, this is Althea. We will speak in Mel-aanie’s tongue." He nodded at his mother. "Althea, Mel-aanie, as you know, came back from Earth in Irena’s intergalactic craft."

  Melanie had begun to smile at the woman, but her smile faltered and her breath stuck somewhere half way up her throat. With her hand over her mouth, she gasped, staring in disbelief.

  "What is it, Mel-aanie? Ah, perhaps I should have explained earlier." Reve curved his fingers around her arm and led her to a couch. Not in time, for she had been ready to collapse. "Althea, fetch Gawayn." He gently pushed Melanie onto it. "We will get this over and done with."
>
  Melanie knew her face had paled. She could almost feel the color draining from her cheeks to her throat. Goosebumps rose on suddenly chill skin. "Sh…she’s." She cleared her throat and tried again. "I don’t believe this! My God! What’s going on here?"

  She was spluttering like a fool. When a man with hair the color of gunmetal walked from the direction Reve’s mother had emerged, she thought she would likely faint. He put a hand on his wife’s shoulder and the pair looked slightly ashamed as they looked at each other then back to her.

  "This is unreal. They’re Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman look-alikes. If it weren’t for the long hair, they’d be the spitting image of them. What the hell is happening? Am I going out of my mind, Reve? Or perhaps I already have, and this has all been a figment of my imagination." Melanie turned a stunned gaze on him and he took hold of one of her hands again, smoothing his fingers over it. For a moment a look matching his parents’ flashed across his eyes. Melanie trembled uncontrollably as she gripped him like a lifeline.

  The couple sat, both regarding her gravely.

  "You have had a shock," the woman exclaimed. "Reve, you should have explained long before now. Imagine what this must be doing to her."

  Stunned speechless Melanie couldn’t take her gaze from her. Apart from the hair Althea was a replica of the star as she’d appeared on a recent TV program.

  "You must have had suspicions, Mel-aanie, when you saw our people all look very much alike." Reve continued to stroke her wrist.

  "Of course I did. I questioned you about it. Why didn’t you tell me sooner? I think I’m going mad." Melanie shook free and pressed her fingers to her temples. This was how it felt to lose ones’ mind. God, when would she wake up? She had the eeriest feeling she never would. This was really happening to her. Looking down at her hands as she clenched them in front of her, she cried shakily, "I still don’t understand how they look like the movie stars. It doesn’t make sense."

  Reve gave a look which was probably meant to be reassuring. It would take more to ease her over this weird shock.