Intergalactic Desire (12 page)

Chapter 3

June paced the small room at the center of her ship. Any minute now. They’ve got to send the reply any minute now.  It had been approximately six hours since her last communication with the Dextronin leadership. It had been almost 24 hours since their first meeting had gone straight to hell. June could not believe things had gone so wrong so quickly. Everything seemed fine up until the moment Dr. Richards went off the deep end and tackled the Dextronin’s leader. No, that wasn’t true.  She had to concede all the human team members became tense when the Dextronin’s first revealed themselves.

First contact with new species always brought anxiety, but this was different. Once the delegates emerged, all the humans in the room had a feeling something was very wrong. Yet June did not feel there was any deception here.  At least she did not believe the Dextronin’s had intentionally perpetrated a ruse. Why should they? What did they stand to gain by pretending to be biologically identical to humans? Besides, Dr. Richards had effectively proven their bodies were real.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a chime from the computer system indicating she had received a reply. Their vessels had been ordered to break away from the Dextronin station, and were holding position at about 100 kilometers. Drummond had attempted to contact the station, but received no reply. After waiting a few hours, June had sent her own message.

To her surprise, the Dextronins replied to her. Unfortunately they refused to readmit the team to the station at that point. So June sent another proposal: she and two other members of their group be allowed to go. Now, after six hours of deliberation, it seemed the Dextronin had come to a decision on her idea.

June opened the message and was shocked to find an invitation to return to the station. But it was only for her. Juniper Kato was the only human being the Dextronin were willing to negotiate with.

At first, Drummond was indignant. Then, he was apprehensive. Finally, he gave his approval for June to return to the station alone. June decided to be diplomatic herself and not point out that technically the vessel they were on belonged to her and she did not require his permission. Instead she thanked him and prepared for the new meeting.

The plan in the message called for June’s human colleges to all transfer to the other two ships, then pilot themselves back through the wormhole. June, alone with her ship, would return to the Dextronin station and meet with a single member of their species to begin anew.

It wasn’t the most promising plan, but it was something. June certainly was not willing to give up on the Dextronins yet. Especially after first contact had created so many new questions.

Three hours later, June was again in the reception room of the station. Her fellow humans had just reported back to her they were on the cusp of slipping back through the wormhole. She stood waiting for the Dextronin with whom she would be working. She had not been told if their representative was a member of the team she had already met. She found herself rocking, testing her equilibrium in the station’s artificial gravity. She hopped an inch off the ground to see if she could feel the station’s circular motion. She didn’t sense anything the first time, so she tried again. Then again.  She started hopping continuously. If nothing else, it was distracting her from her nervousness.

She heard a small cough, and spun around. There was a Dextronin male standing at the door watching her. June felt herself blushing. She fixed her posture and straightened her uniform.

Clearing her throat, she said, “Hello, I am—”

“Juniper,” the man interrupted. “Yes, I know.”

“Of course,” she said, trying to quickly get into the conversation and away from any memory of the childish behavior he had just witnessed. “You must be the Dextronin scientist I’ve been assigned to work with.”

“Yes, my name is Tolin.” He had a soothing voice when he spoke in his own language. The computer matched that tone when it translated his words to English. “I am very familiar with your work, Juniper Kato. At least, what we have been sent thus far through radio communications. Your calculations for space-tearing particle interactions were brilliant.” If she had not already been blushing she would be after that praise. Of course, she had received praise a thousand times from her fellow humans over the last century, but Tolin’s praise had a sincerity to it she had not felt in a very long time.

He took a step closer to her. She examined Tolin top to bottom, a natural thing to do, she reasoned, when meeting a being from another planet but not socially unacceptable in this case. The Dextronin form was nearly identical to a Human, as they noted before. He had tan skin and black hair.  If he was one of the team she had met, she did not recognize him. There was one thing she now noticed about the Dextronin’s that she had not seen on the first meeting: the only overt feature separating them from her kind of human was overly developed trapezius muscles. The enlarged muscle stretched from the back of his neck to his shoulders. It was the size one might expect to see on a human bodybuilder, though Tolin’s overall muscle was just slightly larger than the average human male.

Recognizing the unusual situation they were in, Tolin did not seem to mind her eyes lingering. After a moment, she returned her gaze to his eyes. She only assumed looking him in the eyes was socially acceptable for the Dextronin.

“So,” she continued, “you’re a physicist then?”

“Yes, I actually headed the team that studied the designs we received for the doorstop. Hence my intimate knowledge of your work.”

“I see.” She smiled awkwardly.

“We have prepared quarters for you. Well, for your whole team, but now I suppose just for you. I can take you if you like.”

“Thank you. Most of my things are on the ship.”

“I can have service drones retrieve the necessities and take them to your assigned quarters.”

Chapter 4

June and Tolin went to work that evening. Technically, they were assigned to negotiate peaceful interaction and trade between their two civilizations. However, their conversations seemed to keep straying to more personal topics. It was Tolin who started this trend, of course. About an hour into their negotiations, he surprised June by asking if she had any children. When she hesitated to answer the seemingly impromptu question, he related it back to the conversation they just had about the longevity drugs they had been discussing. She told him no and tried to return to the matter at hand. One advantage of being genetically identical seemed to be they could trade medical knowledge and technology that had been useless to other races. They discussed this for a few more minutes.

Then Tolin said, “I find it surprising that you have lived for over a century and have not reproduced. Most Dextronin’s have at least one offspring.”

June tried to reply without reacting indignantly to the very personal inquiry. “Well, I move around a lot. That’s how I like it. It’s hard to start a family when you’re never in any star system for more than a year or two.”

“I see,” he replied. This satisfied him for a time and they returned to negotiations.

As they proceeded, June became aware she had not reciprocated the question. She hoped a Dextronin would not consider that rude. The next time the trade discussion lulled, she asked, “How about you? Do you have any children?”

“No,” he answered.

She smirked. “And yet, you thought it was odd that I did not have any.”

“Ah, but I am not nearly as old as you are.”

She chose to forgive his unapologetic use of the word “old”.  She had the body of a young woman, so the word really was just a word to her.

“You’ve only told me that your people do use longevity drugs. You never did say how old you were,” she reminded him. If he were Human, and had not used drugs, she’d guess he was just shy of 30.

“Juniper Kato, you’re going to have to do a lot more negotiating to get that kind of personal information.”

Chapter 5

After two days, they had discussed their race’s political philosophies, medical techniques, computer technology, and literature. And for every one discussion about their two species, they had two off-the-record discussions about their own lives.

June learned Tolin was born on his people’s home world, but his family had emigrated to one of the moons of a nearby gas giant. He had grown up there and had studied at an institute for astrophysics on that moon. He had then started working for an aerospace company and this work had taken him all across the Dextronin System. At this point in his life, he had visited all the worlds his people had colonized.

As they talked, June began to realize she and Tolin’s lives were very similar, in a way. He traveled frequently around their system using the space drives that he designed. She traveled around the galaxy using the wormholes she designed. Of course, their lives differed in significant ways, too. Tolin still had a family back on his moon. He mentioned his parents and siblings many times. June had been on her own for decades now. Her only connections with other people were business interactions. Q-bit was probably the closest thing she had to a friend and she didn’t think that counted. AIs like Q-bit adapted to easily relate to the personality of whomever they were working with, so it was inevitable that she would feel close to him.

Throughout their discussions, she carefully danced around telling Tolin why she had so few connections. She had been avoiding that conversation for years, so she did it almost automatically.

After the first day, she had retired to her guest quarters and slept through the night. When the second day concluded, Tolin had invited her to join him for a meal. She accepted and they ate in the station’s mess hall. No longer on the clock, they devoted this time together to personal matters. She explained the social structure of Earth and how it had changed over the centuries. She was surprised to learn Dextronin society was very much like Earth’s. But they did not seem to have experienced the same social changes Humanity had. Their society had always been the way it was.

Woman were considered equal to men. Differences in outward appearance due to local variations in genetics were not reflective of a person’s worth. Science and intellectual inquiry were considered superior to the superstition of faith. The concept of slavery was unknown to them. Tolin told her this was the way it had always been, through all 10 millennia of recorded Dextronin history.

Things got really confusing for June when she tried to ask Tolin what was known of their people before recorded history. He seemed not to understand the question. He kept repeating the Dextronin’s history had begun 10 millennia ago and there was nothing before that. She tried to ask him about fossils of his ancient ancestors or the ancestors of the other animals of his world. She knew enough about his home world to know it had a thriving ecology. Yet he insisted everything the Dextronin knew had begun 10 millennia earlier with no precursors. The conversation was going nowhere, so June decided to let it be for a while.

After all, most of her questions regarding Dextronin biology would be answered, she presumed, on the third day of negotiations. She and Tolin had arranged for their species to trade collections of genetic samples from each of their worlds. “The Ark”, as she was calling it, would arrive from the wormhole the next morning.

Tolin walked her back to her quarters. They stood at her door for a moment finishing the discussion of galactic politics they had been engaged in on the way back. Tolin looked as if he wanted to say something but could not find the right words. This could very well be the case. The computers were very good at translating their words, but sometimes made mistakes with the nuances of Human and Dextronin speech. He may have wanted to say something important that he did not want lost in translation. Or maybe he just truly was not sure what to say.

“Well, I need to get to bed,” she said, filling the silence.

“Of course. I hope you sleep well.”

She stepped into the room and began to slide the door shut. She paused. His eyes were still on her. They were bright green. She had not noticed that until now. It had probably been decades since she had given any thought to the color of someone’s eyes.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she added, then closed the door.

Chapter 6

The next morning, June arrived at the workspace she and Tolin had been using to find he was already there, in conversation with another Dextronin. Even after she entered the room, they continued to speak quickly in their language with only a cursory glance in her direction and a nod to acknowledge her presence. When they nodded, she realized it was Shreta speaking with Tolin. Their words were not being translated for her. She waited for them to finish their business. After another minute they seemed to conclude their discussion. Shreta flicked her wrist, apparently signaling the computer to start translating again.

“Good morning, Dr. Kato,” Shreta greeted. “I’m afraid we have some worrisome news.”

Once again, June had no trouble reading the Dextronin’s body language. She suddenly felt very tense. Whatever they had to say, it clearly affected her.

“Earlier this morning, our wormhole team and the team on the other side tried to transport the Ark through Z114. Something…happened.” She did not seem sure how to clarify that statement.

“It didn’t survive the transit?” June asked.

“It did not emerge from the wormhole,” Shreta said. “Your people reported its launch and it was tracked as it moved through the wormhole, but we never received it on our end. Somewhere in the transit, it disappeared from their sensors.”

June’s first concern was for her mission. She could not meet the terms of the deal she and Tolin had worked out for the exchange if she did not have the Ark. They’d have to send another before their exchange could proceed… Then it hit her.

“This wasn’t a single incident was it?”

Shreta hesitated, then said, “No. We had lost one test probe before that and after the Ark failed to emerge your people tried two more probes. We have been able to maintain radio contact with your people, but it seems that anything material cannot pass through Z114 safely.”

June tried to process that information.
She could not safely return to the Solar System.
That wormhole was the Dextronin’s only connection to the galaxy. If it did not work, they were isolated, and she was stuck there with them.

Tolin put a hand on her shoulder. “Are you okay, June?”

Was she? She didn’t know. It wasn’t like she had any family back in the Solar System. Yet something about being stuck in the Dextronin system made her made her lightheaded. She felt… claustrophobic? Maybe. She had been traveling freely around the galaxy for so long, she did not know how to stay in one place.

Of course, she could be overreacting. The problem might only be temporary.

“What changed?” she asked them. “We sent several probes across without incident and my team crossed over twice with no trouble, so something must have changed. Are you detecting any debris from the probes or the Ark?”

“No,” Shreta answered. “And we’re not sure why. They just disappeared. We’re closely monitoring the movement of mass inside the wormhole and there is no sign they are still inside it. My team has no explanation.”

“Well then.”  June took a breath. “We better get started. We’re not going to explain it by standing around here.”

June and Tolin began pouring over sensor data. Unfortunately, June found the Dextronin system was not nearly as advanced as what she was used to working with. On a human world, sensor arrays would be monitoring the entire EM radiation spectrum, as well as gravity fluctuations and cosmic rays. The Dextronins monitored only the few bands they used for communications and stellar radar. A full week passed with no results. The data she could access showed no anomalies that could account for the wormhole’s change in behavior.

June had told Tolin and Shreta she was fine. She explained there was no one waiting up for her back home and she was in no hurry to get back. So Tolin must have been quite confused by her frustration when she was unable to find the cause of the wormhole’s instability. Tolin helped where he could, but her understanding of wormhole physics was a century beyond his.

“I’m not finding anything in the Dextronin records to explain what might have changed. All EM readings are normal. Cosmic radiation is at normal background levels. Same for solar rays,” she told him as she scrolled through holographic text with a stylus.

“Then the interference must be something that we do not normally monitor.”

“I know!” She spat. The stylus slipped from her fingers and landed at Tolin’s feet. His face registered hurt for the briefest moment, then concern.

“I’m sorry,” she sighed. “I guess I’m just feeling…caged. This is the first time in a century that I can’t just go where I want to go. That was the perk of being the one who made the wormholes usable. No one really questioned my using them whenever I pleased.”

“I’m sure this is difficult for you. If I was told I may have to spend the rest of my life on this one station, I’d probably be feeling the same way.”

She had realized early on in their association Tolin was a very empathetic person. June had met many aliens, but this was the first time she was truly able to connect to one the way two human beings usually did. Most sentient species experienced some equivalent of the emotions humans did, but they never seemed to truly connect on an emotional level. There was always some kind of intangible barrier. June felt no such barrier with Tolin.

Tolin reached down and picked up the stylus from the floor. Suddenly, images flooded June’s mind: the stylus falling. Herself in the reception room jumping up and down like a child. The station as it appeared from the exterior, cylindrical and rotating.

“You don’t monitor gravity!” she said.

Tolin’s brow furrowed. “No. Why would we?”

“Of course. You wouldn’t. You don’t have artificial gravity simulators. You still rely on centripetal force to hold you to the floor of your spaceships. But our ships monitor gravity constantly so they can account for any fluctuations in the local gravity field and adjust the onboard artificial gravity.”

“I see. So we can use your vessel to scan the local gravitational field for anomalies,” Tolin added.

“Exactly!”

They were aboard her ship within minutes.

“Welcome back, June,” Q-bit greeted. “Has your stay with the Dextronin been pleasant?”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah, yeah. They’ve been great,” she answered, not really giving the question any thought. “Q-bit, I need you to compile and display all your gravitational sensor data for the last 10 days.”

The control console lit up with holographic data. June scrolled through the information, taking it in. Tolin stood respectfully behind her. He knew he’d be useless at trying to interpret the gravity data so he tried to give her space to work.

“Here,” she said after a long silence. “I got it!”

Tolin stepped up next to her at the console. She had opened a holographic map of the Dextronin System and was pointing to a blinking dot on the farthest edge.

“What is it?” Tolin asked squinting at the dot.

“That my alien friend, is your star’s long lost sister.” He gave her a look of confusion. “It’s a gravitational singularity—a black hole. You’re star system is binary. Neither your people nor mine knew about it because it’s not consuming any matter or altering the trajectories of other bodies. But it’s there, on the furthest reaches of your star system. Although distant, it is exerting a gravitational force on everything in the system. It’s not going to tear planets apart, but it is enough to interfere with our wormhole.”

Tolin smiled. “A black hole… I can’t believe it. Just imagine the possibilities for our people’s understanding of astrophysics. We can actually study a black hole up close. We already have drones exploring that region.”

“And…I can probably account for the black hole and adjust the doorstop accordingly,” June said hopefully.

“You really think you can stabilize the wormhole?”

Uncertainty crept into her excited expression. “Well, I’m not quite sure what the black hole did to the wormhole. We still don’t know where the probes and the Ark ended up. But, I think I can make the adjustments that will counter its influence.” She smiled again.
Yes, she could do it she was sure of it.  She could get home.

“But...” Tolin began, then hesitated.

“What?”

“But, it will be very risky. Without knowing all the factors, you might end up like the probes,” he said, concern in his tone.

“Well, yes. But wormhole travel has never been without risk. Besides, I just can’t stay put like this. It’s driving me…”

June did not finish the sentence. Tolin’s lips were pressed to hers before she knew what was happening. They lingered for a moment, then he slowly pulled back. The look on his face was…apologetic.

“That was…inappropriate,” he said. “I’m sorry. I don’t even know if your people…if you…”

“We do,” June said. “With warning…at the right time…with the right person.” She was sure she was blushing.

June would be lying if she were to say she had not wondered what it would be like to kiss Tolin. In their time together she’d also had more than a few stray thoughts about what he looked like under that Dextronin uniform. Those she suppressed. There had been work to do. He was hardly the first man she had felt an attraction to in the last century. She had had her fair share of flings during that time. When she did indulge in such behavior, she always made it clear to the other party she was just passing through and would be moving on in due time. Even in those times when her professional relationships had turned physical, there had been little emotion involved.

“Tolin, I…” He was looking her straight in the eyes, which made it harder for her to form a coherent thought. She and Tolin had connected in a way she had not experienced in a very long time. But...

“Tolin, we’re… We hardly know each other.” That was untrue. She and Tolin had shared more about themselves with each other than she had with her closest human colleagues, even in such a short time. “What I mean is…”

“We’re different species,” he stated for her.

“Yes.”

“But are we? The computer had already decoded our DNA and shown that our species are genetically similar. Your people say it should be impossible, but somehow it is so. We are the same. Or at least similar enough.”

She looked at him again. He did look human. The overdeveloped shoulder muscles were the only unusual feature he possessed. He could walk down a street on Earth and go entirely unnoticed. Well, maybe not unnoticed. He was, after all, very attractive.

“I am sorry about what I just did. But you just said you want to attempt a risky wormhole transit and perhaps leave this system forever. I was overcome by the thought of you doing that without us ever having the opportunity to experience…that.”

She wasn’t sure what to say. She had interacted with many aliens through the years, but had never formed feelings for one. Not until now. Her hand rested on the back of his thick neck and she guided him into another kiss.

Neon blue numbers and words warped and morphed into strange shapes around June’s body. She’d backed into the control console and was now seated on its flat surface. The shimmering text swam around her as her body movements triggered the scrolling mechanism. She ignored the holograms. Her focus was on the feeling of Tolin pressing against her. The material of his uniform had a velvet-like softness. It was fairly thin and she could feel his body heat emanating. She felt around his chest till she found the seam that ran down the front of his shirt. She started to undo the clasps that held it together. As she did, Tolin ran his fingers through her hair. It briefly occurred to her the Dextronin woman she had seen all had fairly short hair. Hers came down to just below her shoulders.

She reached the last clasp and the seam parted, giving her a glimpse of his upper body. She slipped her hands under the top of the shirt and over his large shoulder muscles. Then she pulled the shirt down. His arms slipped out of the sleeves and the shirt fell to the floor. She took a moment to survey his bare torso. His skin was smooth for the most part, the one exception being a patch of short white hair in the very center of his chest.  She ran her hands over the silky hair. Then she returned her hands to his shoulders. She began massaging his trapezius muscles and as she did, she instinctively explored how they connected with his neck, chest and arms. The ligaments all appeared to be in the same place as they would on a human, just stretched to accommodate the larger shoulder muscle. He gave a soft moan, clearly enjoying the massage.

He had been keeping one hand on her back since the moment she had leaned into the console. Now, he lowered that hand and she allowed him to guide her down until she was lying flat on the console’s surface. The neon gravitational data floated in the air between them. His hands moved over her legs and she could feel him undoing the clasp on her pants. She shuddered slightly as his hands moved back down her leg. Then her pants were pulled off. He left her undergarments alone for the moment.

Tolin leaned forward, his face passing through the holographic text. He paused over her for a moment, then stretched down and kissed her. As they kissed, he braced his elbows on the console and undid the buttons on her shirt. He quickly had her shirt open and their upper bodies met. He began to explore her body as she had done to him.  June’s shirt was then pulled out from under her and discarded. The clasp on her bra was located and undone. That was discarded as well.