Deceit: BBW Alien Lottery Romance (Chosen by the Karal Book 1) (9 page)

As he placed a hot pastry of some kind on a wooden plate, she breathed in with joy, and understood what he and this planet had given her. Hope. Mixed with wonder and a childlike need to explore its corners. On Earth, there was nothing left, nothing new. But here, she felt like a child, about to begin life, but with adult senses.

Last night, in the garden, she had felt it. After she had buried the contraband, she had walked, letting her mind relax and take in the scents, the colours, so different to anything she had seen. Karal was truly an alien planet. Why she had expected it to be a clone of Earth she had no idea, but when she saw the two suns setting in the distance she had known she would not be happy shut away as a breeding female. She wanted to be part of this world. A part of Marin’s world.

“Eat and drink, then tell me if you want the SimCoff.” He wrinkled his nose at the very thought of it.

She picked the cup up, put off by the red liquid swirling around. “It looks like blood.”

He laughed. “Just taste it. After all the garbage food I have had to endure on Earth, you can at least do me the honour of drinking this. It is fresh. Try it.”

She took a tentative sip, ready to spit it back out. However, apart from burning her tongue a little, she found it delicious. Bitter, like real coffee. She had only ever experienced real coffee once, on her birthday, but the flavour had endured in her senses; making the synthetic taste of SimCoff impossible to ignore. Another sip and she felt a slight buzz, caffeine. Or something similar. Oh, was it good.

“Not too much. It’s strong and you have to let your brain become accustomed to it.”

“My brain?”

He laughed. “Of course, it stimulates the senses. Some say the Karal have always drunk it and that is why our skin glows with colours.”

“You are an amazing species. In that respect,” she added quickly.

“It takes some years to control. There are many fights and much teasing over the colours that flash on the skins of children. But it is good; there is nothing but honesty between our offspring, because there is no way to deceive when your emotions are on show.”

“Humans could learn a lot from you. Maybe you should export this … What is it called? … to Earth.”

“Tole. It comes from the far side of the planet, where the suns heat the Karal until it is almost barren. Then the rains come and the Tole burst into life for only a short time. It is harvested and dried.”

“Can I go and see?” She wanted to see the whole of his world.

“Not today. The suns are at their fiercest, but there are other wonders I can show you.”

“Yes, please.” She drank her coffee and then took a bite of her pastry, her mouth watering at the taste and texture. “That is divine. You know I have eaten more fresh food in the short time I have been here than I have in the last year on Earth.”

“I’m glad you approve. I thought I would have to import some of those powdered meals you all eat.”

“Necessity, Marin. Not choice.” Elissa licked the last crumbs off her fingers, and then added. “The very reason you brought me here.”

He smiled. “I find you a lot more enjoyable than those powdered meals.”

“Flattering, I guess.” But the look he gave her made her skin flush red and the butterflies in her stomach twirl out of control. Before she dragged him back to the bedroom, she said, “Shall we go?”

“Of course.”

They travelled in the same cruiser they had arrived in. Elissa thought it worked like a solar-powered hovercraft, no wheels and no gas. But it was fast and coped with every terrain they covered.

“It runs on the sun, the solaris. You call it solar power. We discovered it on a planet some centuries ago and brought the technology here.”

“Is that what you do? Gather technology?” She couldn’t believe how quiet the vehicle was, and no smelly fumes.

“Yes, and plants. We sometimes bring new species here, but they are always introduced carefully so that the indigenous fauna is never damaged.”

“So women aren’t the only thing you collect.”

“No. But they are the most necessary, as you say.”

“Why are there no females among your people?”

“It is the way we evolved.” He was silent for a moment, and she knew he was pondering whether to share some facet of their culture. Because there must surely have been females once, or else how did they procreate before space travel? She looked out of the window at the mountains rising impossibly high into the cloudbanks and allowed him time to think.

“Oh, look.” She pointed at a large, lumbering animal, a cross between an elephant and a giraffe. Creatures long extinct, but still her favourites from old picture books. It had the skin and trunk of an elephant, but its neck was long.

“Arunda. They usually travel in herds. We’ll move on and then stop to watch.”

Marin stopped the vehicle and then got out, helping her to climb onto its roof to get a better view. When he said
herd
, she had not expected the spectacle unfolding before her. The herd consisted of ten arunda fanning out in front, scouts, she guessed. Behind then flowed up to a hundred more, she guessed females and their young. They moved together. Almost as a flock of birds, calmly and methodically.

“Where are they going?”

“The seasons are in flux. They will travel a hundred miles to their pastures, where it is what you call summer.”

“So they are migrating?”

“Yes, more will come in the next few days.”

“We used to have lots of animals on Earth. I have only seen pictures.”

“There is so much more to see.” He jumped down, and she had to admire his athleticism.

“I just realised how sweet the air is. This is what it must be like to live in the pents.”

“Pents?” He held up his arms and she jumped down into them, loving the way he caught her in his strong arms.

“Rich humans who live in big domes filled with pure air.”

“Ah, here there is no pollution, so no need for domes.”

They travelled on, the terrain changing, and they began to move into the foothills of the mountains. As they climbed, she turned in her seat to look back behind them. The vista was colourful, with large forests in the distance; the greens of the leaves interspersed with vibrant pinks, which she only assumed were blossoms.

“Where are we going?” she asked, as the slopes became steeper.

“To where my ancestors once lived.” He turned and headed along a ridge, the drop below them making Elissa feel queasy. “This is not like your cars. If there is no ground beneath it, we will fly instead.”

“Handy,” she answered, still not convinced.

“Here, you will see it soon.” He pointed in front of them and to the left, she looked, to see a network of caves, then as they got closer, in front of the caves a town, well, what was left of it, spread out.

“How long has this been here?” she asked, not waiting for him to get out and help her. Instead, she was off towards the ruins at a fast walk. “We used to have such things on Earth, but between wars, and the need for every piece of raw material to be used to build new houses, there are few left. Those that are tend to be so remote only the pents visit.”

“These ruins are protected, almost sacred, in your language.”

“Why?” she asked, running her fingers along the rough stone. It was all so different from the small, smooth building he lived in.

“To remind us. We were once more like you. Our women lived with us. Then we got greedy—we took more land, cut down forests in our bid to control the planet. And we paid the price.”

“What happened?” she asked in a small voice.

“Poison. Not the kind that killed. But the rivers held toxins that meant that only males were conceived. Slowly at first, the females began to die in the womb.”

“Marin. That is terrible.”

“So we gave up expanding, knowing that we had to look to the stars for the next generation of Karalians.” He gazed at the ruins as he spoke. “We were lucky, another race landed on our planet. We used their craft to venture out into the unknown. We used their technology to further our own.”

“That is how you made the leap into space.” She understood now. For all of their technology, the Karalians were flawed. They had not invented the things they needed. They had borrowed them. “If the other race hadn’t come here, you would be extinct.”

“Yes.”

“And yet you are so quick to judge humans. Until you came, we only had what we invented or created for ourselves.”

“But you have no control. That is the lesson my people learned thousands of years ago.”

“Marin, how do you intend to help the Earth? If you are not scientists or inventors, how are you going to come up with an idea?”

“We have learned many things. We have evolved and now try to be the creators. But I will admit, saving your Earth is a near-impossible task.”

She looked up at the dual suns and then down at the ruins of the city. “There isn’t a way, is there?”

He sighed, “We are trying, but how do you transform an empty shell?”

“So why not do what you did for your own people? You must have found countless planets, planets that would support life.”

“My people will not tolerate your species doing the same thing to another planet.”

“They wouldn’t. I’m not saying that you simply take everyone to another planet. I mean, you set up a colony. A little like the lottery. You can make sure you choose only the best people. Then the human race will survive, and so too will your people.”

“It is a good idea. I would have to put it before the Hierarchy.”

“Will they listen?”

“It might take some time to persuade them. And it might take a lot to sell it to your people.”

“If you make the right offer, there are always people willing to do whatever it takes. Not always for the good of everyone.” She stood looking at the empty ruins, the fact that his people had found a way to save themselves giving her hope. “Can I see where you work? Maybe I can help you come up with solutions. It’s what I was trained to do. Maybe with the help of some of the scientists on Earth we can find a way of doing both. Colonising a planet and saving Earth.”

“I never knew a species which is so destructive could be so positive.”

“You have only ever seen the harm humans do. But they are good too. I know it’s hard to believe that; even I have trouble believing they are worth saving. However, I think we have to try. The Universe is a big place, an empty place. It would be a pity if our civilisation is one more that fades away.”

“Sometimes I wonder who it was that rigged the lottery for you to win. I thought it was us, but your world could not have chosen a better ambassador.” He hesitated, and then added, “Although we brought you here for the knowledge you have on the resistance.”

“I know,” she said, suddenly scared that he had brought it up. They were miles away from anywhere as far as she knew; he could so easily make it look like an accident if she fell off the ridge to her death. “I have nothing to tell you, Marin. The resistance is in the past, for me at least. I turned my back on it after…”

“The deaths,” he finished for her.

“Yes,” she answered quietly, moving away from him. Elissa hated thinking, yet alone speaking, about it.

“Will you tell me what happened?” His voice was soft; he didn’t try to touch her, to persuade her with his emotions.

“I don’t like to even think about it. It was supposed to be peaceful; we only wanted to bring the world’s awareness to you. I mean, you just turned up from nowhere, and you seemed so emotionless, I was convinced you were evil.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I was in love, or I thought I was. He made me feel special. He told me so much I didn’t know about how things worked. And he convinced me you were in league with the President. Also that the President was secretly selling people to you.”

“What for?”

“In return for technology. And when he told me you had funded the tagging system’s reboot, I believed him. From that, you knew exactly who everyone was, their genetic make-up.”

“It was for the breeding programme.”

“I know that now. And it still doesn’t make things better, does it? You came down and sold yourselves as the saviour of humankind. Yet you were only after what you needed. If helping us made that easier for you, then that’s what you did.”

“Not exactly. Yours is the first species that we have ever become so formally involved with. Normally, we take what we need.”

“You just kidnap women?”

“Yes. It is what we have always done. But the Hierarchy wanted this to be different, more sustainable. After all, we live a sustainable life here on Karal. So why not when it comes to breeding?”

“Please don’t expect me to be grateful to you for giving us a choice.”

“I don’t expect that, because you didn’t have a choice, did you?”

“No. And not just because my sister entered me. I knew it wasn’t a coincidence from the start. So is this where you torture me? And then throw me off the side of your mountain, a sacrifice to your ancestors?”

“Now I know why we do not have your TV here. It makes your imagination too wild.”

“So you’re telling me that it’s true? What you said about us getting on?”

“Yes. I thought you were deceitful and selfish. You thought we were deceitful thieves. I have changed my view of you.”

She smiled and came to him. “As I have of you, Marin. Have you ever made love under the sky?”

He was taken aback. “Of course not. You know last night was my first time.”

“Not even with your simulator?”

He shook his head; the colours had immediately started to dance across his skin. “No. I would never believe that you would want to.”

“Well, you are wrong there too, Marin. Let’s celebrate the time when your males and females lived together. They would have been happy. Let’s celebrate the joining of our two species right here. You are not the monsters I thought you were. I think both our species were wrong in so many ways. But can’t we come together and make things right?”

She placed her hand on his cheek; standing on tiptoes, she kissed him softly. He responded immediately, his arms gathering her to him. And while the two suns continued their dance above their heads, he lay her down on the soft ground and kissed her until his skin burned brighter than the stars.