Eva stepped carefully into the hatch of the Hrwang craft. It was nicer than the one she’d ridden back in the first time. She and the Lord Admiral had been miles away from Griffith Observatory and from the house she and Juan stayed in, and the Lord Admiral had summoned the craft for a ride back, offering to take her home also. She had been nervous about accepting, but saw no reasonable way around it and still maintain contact with the Hrwang admiral.
And she didn’t feel like running the ten or so miles back, although she would have done it if she needed to.
The Lieutenant Grenadier studiously ignored her as she sat in one of the seats. He sat in the row in front of her on the other side of the aisle. This craft was laid out like a small airplane and could seat forty or so. The first one she’d ridden was smaller and felt like a troop carrier, with jump seats lining either side and tie downs for vehicles or heavy equipment up the center.
The engines cycled up and the view out the cockpit windows changed. They were flying.
It was disconcerting.
The pilot arced the craft around and she could see Griffith Observatory out of the window. The white tower out in front, the three domes, the stunning view of the valley below. Just like she’d remembered it. The craft landed and the Lieutenant Grenadier cycled the hatch open and invited her out.
She climbed out with difficulty, the four-inch heels making it challenging, the air spilling from the engines blowing her skirt around. It was too short to let it blow around too much, and she used one hand to steady herself and one to try to keep it down.
Stepping away from the craft helped and she reached up to fix her hair. Only the Lieutenant Grenadier exited with her, and as soon as he was away from the machine, it vanished.
“How do y’all do that?” Eva asked with as much incredulity and innocence as she could muster. And too much Southern. Whenever she tried to sound like an idiot, she always let a fake Southern accent creep in. She needed to watch that. She needed to stick to her natural accent or she’d have to fake an accent constantly.
The Hrwang Lieutenant simply shrugged.
Her heels sank into the grass and she pulled them out and stepped lightly onto the sidewalk, giggling. She put her arm through the Lieutenant’s arm and the man stiffened. Good. Maybe the Lord Admiral watched from a window somewhere.
She noted two devices that had been placed on the roof of the observatory, one on each side. Clearly anti-aircraft systems of some sort, although she couldn’t see if they launched missiles or fired shells. She chattered about the gorgeous view while looking around and saw two more of the weapon systems on the grounds. Each looked to be manned by a crew of five.
Then she saw what had to be drones. Tiny aircraft, too small to fit people, patrolled the skies above. Eva counted at least a dozen while trying not to be too obvious about it.
The Lieutenant Grenadier never responded to her chatting, so she asked him a direct question.
“Is Grenadier like your last name, or something? It means something else here.”
“It is my unit designation,” he replied stiffly.
“Oh. What’s your name?”
He didn’t reply.
“Cat got your tongue?” Eva berated herself. She was sounding too much like a hick. She needed to tone it down.
“The Lord Admiral will explain our customs to you,” the Lieutenant replied.
“Suit yourself.”
They walked slowly towards the entrance. No guard challenged them, but eyes watched them. Watched her. She flounced a little, exaggerating her motions as she pointed something out. The Lieutenant was clearly nervous with her flirting.
They entered the central rotunda and it was as awesome as she had remembered. She circled around inside, staring up at the murals on the ceiling and surrounding the walls near the ceiling as if she were seeing them for the first time.
“Would you look at that? Oh my gosh, check that out,” she gushed, noticing more soldiers staring at her, some sort of cannon that sat in the corner, and a large computer station with docking ports, each port about the size of an envelope. Soldiers waited in line with cartridges, inserting them into the ports when it was their turn. She stalled, pretending to admire a statue in the center of the rotunda, until one of the soldiers finished. It took about two minutes to do whatever it was they were doing.
“This way, please,” the Lieutenant said.
“Okay,” Eva said brightly and bounced after him. Every soldier noticed her.
He led her into one of the side hallways. It looked different than how Eva remembered. She recalled the hallways filled with science exhibits, lit diagrams about the solar system and the stars beyond, but instead they were now decorated with heroic art, something that would be seen in a European museum. Figures fighting with swords on horseback, god-like images in titanic struggle, and only one painting of a woman. She was dressed in all white and stood atop a pedestal, looking almost like Lady Justice without the blindfold.
“Nice paintings,” she commented, pulling on the Lieutenant to make him stop. She held his arm tightly. “Who’s that?” she asked.
“The Goddess Esrain,” a mellifluous baritone replied from the end of the hallway. The Lieutenant tried to pull away, but she wouldn’t let him go. They turned together to see the Lord Admiral entering. He wore a black uniform clearly designed for formal occasions, ribbons and medals decorating his chest and elaborate rank insignia on the epaulets.
So human.
“Some worship her as the wife of God, although his wife’s true name is sacred and unknowable,” the Lord Admiral said. “Others sacrifice to her in the hopes of having children.”
“A fertility god,” Eva said. By now the Lord Admiral had reached them and she could feel the Lieutenant’s desperation to pull away from her. She held on. “We call her Venus, the goddess of love and beauty.”
The Lord Admiral nodded. “Do you make such sacrifices to your Venus?”
“Oh my word, no,” Eva replied, acting embarrassed.
“We, too, would consider such sacrifices blasphemy now,” the Lord Admiral said. “Pity. They sounded fun.”
He grinned at her and reached his arm out. She squeezed the Lieutenant’s arm and stared in his eyes a second. He wouldn’t look back at her.
“Thank you so much, Lieutenant,” she said and finally let him go. He stumbled away, but Eva kept a straight face.
“Do you like my Lieutenant?” the Lord Admiral asked when the man was several yards away.
“He’s a sweet boy,” she replied as she took the Lord Admiral’s arm. She could feel the man’s chest puffing up and almost laughed. She could play this guy like a fiddle.
Dinner was for two. They dined in an elegant room that looked like a fine restaurant, with six or seven tables, although only theirs was decorated and occupied. This definitely hadn’t been here when Eva had visited as a teenager.
“I asked your Lieutenant if Grenadier was his name and he said you would explain,” she said over an appetizer of meatballs decorated with a spicy tomato and onion mixture. A waiter poured them wine, which Eva left untouched, as the Lord Admiral explained Hrwang customs about names.
“So, if you don’t call me by name, what would you call me?” Eva asked, genuinely interested.
“Tonight you are my guest and would be referred to simply as that, the Lord Admiral’s Guest.”
“Isn’t a name simpler?”
He smiled. “Names are sacred and should never be used lightly.”
“So why Grenadier?”
“When our scholars researched the best words to use for translating, they learned of a custom that some of your militaries follow that is similar to ours. Do you know what a grenade is?”
“Sure. A little bomb thingy you throw.”
He chuckled patronizingly, like a soldier explaining something to a complete innocent. If he only knew about her recent involvement with grenades.
/> “Soldiers with powerful chests,” he actually swelled his chest up and raised his arms in the air to demonstrate, “were good at throwing grenades, thus became Grenadiers. When we made weapons that fired grenades, Grenadiers were no longer needed. But they had the tradition of being the strongest. They practiced throwing heavy iron balls...”
“Shot put,” Eva interrupted.
He nodded. “Shot put. They practiced throwing shot put and it became a competition world-wide. They try to be the strongest and the toughest and the most loyal soldiers. So, the Lord Admiral’s personal soldiers are always called Grenadiers and they follow this custom.”
Eva immediately thought of Juan. He was her personal Grenadier.
“Neat. Where did you learn English so well.”
He smiled and held his wine glass up to her. “That, my dear, is a secret.” He grinned and took a drink.
The waiter served them Cornish Game Hen with potatoes, carrots, and sweet potatoes. They had been spiced unusually but looked like food you could get in any restaurant on Earth. Eva asked about it.
“This is your people’s food,” the Lord Admiral explained. “One of the joys of being planetside again. Real food, fresh from a farm. But Hrwang spices. Good, isn’t it?”
“Mmm, hmm,” she mumbled over a small bite of food. It was much too hot for her, but she wasn’t going to admit that. She’d have terrible breath afterward. “I think you’d love our Mexican food,” she said after swallowing. “How long were you in space?”
“Much too long. I missed the simple delights, like this afternoon’s meal.”
Eva waited, but he didn’t elaborate. Time to choose a new tack.
“We would consider this a little early for such a formal meal. Do the Hrwang always eat this early?”
“Really. I never knew that. How late would you eat?”
“A wonderful, fancy meal like this? About eight o’clock, or so.”
The Lord Admiral pulled out a tablet and looked something up on it.
“But that’s so late,” he said. “Wouldn’t you get...” He looked something else up. “Indigestion?” He pronounced it wrong, but Eva knew what he meant.
“I guess. It’s just our custom.”
“Ours is better,” he said. “It leaves you more time for other activities after.”
“Like what?” Eva said and grinned, taking a bite of her meat. The Lord Admiral grinned wickedly back.
“It tastes like chicken, doesn’t it?”
“It is chicken.”
“But it’s so small. Our chickens are much bigger.”
“They’re bred this way,” she answered. “Tiny, little chickens.”
“Interesting,” he replied, and small talk about animals continued. The Hrwang had equivalents for many of the same domestic animals that Earth had, and they simply used the English names for translating, although from his description, it sounded like they got ‘sheep’ and ‘goat’ confused. She corrected him.
He immediately entered it into his tablet.
“Thank you, my dear. Now we won’t make that mistake again.”
“Wireless upload?” she asked, trying to sound like it was an innocent question.
“Wireless?” he replied, sounding astounded. “Wireless is not secure. Why would anyone use wireless? We played with it for a while, but there was no way to encrypt signals that could be guaranteed to be safe.”
“So?”
“You really don’t understand important matters, do you? What is your job?”
Eva froze inside without reacting visibly. She hadn’t thought of a job as she considered her cover story. It was such a basic thing, she berated herself for forgetting it. She’d been in such a rush to get all dolled up to come here and seduce secrets out of the man that she didn’t even consider how she would explain her employment.
The Lord Admiral waited for her reply. She acted like she was a little embarrassed, which made her think she might tell him she was an exotic dancer or something, but she didn’t know how to dance to save her life. She had to think of something else.
“Well, you know,” she started and thought of the Widow Brennan’s house. “My Daddy’s pretty rich, so I, you know, haven’t settled on anything yet.”
“A child of comfort,” the Lord Admiral said in an understanding voice. Hrwang had rich, spoiled brats also, apparently. “Are you still a student?”
Did she really look that young?
“I’m taking a little time off from school at the moment. I just needed a break.” Whew, she thought. That makes for a pretty simple cover story. Coed out partying for a while.
“What are you studying?”
“International relations. It’s kind of a blow off major, you know.”
The Lord Admiral didn’t. He looked down at his tablet, scrolled for a couple of seconds, then looked back up at Eva.
“What is a blow off major?”
“You know. Something easy that looks good on a resume. Classes with lots of cute guys.” She almost added who wanted to be spies. It seemed like every moron who applied for the Agency who didn’t have enough brains to make the cut had majored in International Relations. She stopped herself from saying that just in time.
The Lord Admiral looked positively jealous at her ‘cute guys’ comment.
After dinner, the Lord Admiral took her on a tour. They went into the basement. It seemed like soldiers had cleared out of each area just seconds before they arrived. They entered a room with wooden floors, like a small dance hall or gym.
“I had some of the equipment moved out, just for you, my dear.”
“Thank you. Why?”
“It’s normally a sparring room. Soldiers need to stay in shape, and after so long in space, muscles lose their tone. I exercise here.”
“And why did you have it cleared out?” Eva felt a little nervous.
“For this. I believe you have the same custom.” He raised his hand in the air and the lights dimmed and music began playing. It sounded a little like jazz. “Will you dance with me?”
“I’d be delighted,” Eva said and gave him her million dollar smile. She didn’t have a clue how to dance.
He put both of his hands on her bare shoulders and told her to put her hands on his waist. He led her in some steps, explaining what she should do, sometimes counting with her.
“Our dances must be different from yours,” he said.
“A bit.”
Another song started, this one faster, but they still danced slowly to it. Eva followed the Hrwang’s lead.
“What would you call this type of music?” he asked.
“Jazz.”
He smiled. “Jazz. Jazzzz,” he said, stretching out the ‘Z’. “I like that word. Jazz.”
“What do you call it?” she asked.
“In my native tongue it is called ‘Sevba’.”
“Sevba. That’s Hrwang for Jazz?”
“My dear,” he chuckled a little. “We have thousands of languages on Hrwang, just like you do here. My native tongue is Est, from the country, my country, which is also called Est.”
“Do you speak other languages?”
“Still curious about how I speak English?”
“I guess.” Eva shrugged. It felt strange to shrug with his hands on her bare shoulders. As she thought about it, she knew she was attracted to this Lord Admiral. Good. That would make things easier, the clinical side of her mind thought. He was clearly attracted to her.
“Without revealing a secret, I can tell you the Est have developed ways to learn languages quickly. I speak four languages, including English. But this learning doesn’t teach us details. Ways you say things that are a little different from others, and mean something just a little different.”
“Nuances.”
“Yes. Nuances.”
“Like when you asked me to dance,” Eva said. “You asked
, ‘Will you dance with me?’ A human man would have asked, ‘Would you care to dance with me?’”
The Lord Admiral’s face hardened.
“I’m sorry,” Eva said quickly. “I didn’t mean to correct your English without your permission.”
The Lord Admiral replied formally, “I apologize. I want you to correct my English. I am upset because you said I wasn’t human.”
Eva remembered the broadcasts from the alien’s arrival. They had claimed to be just as human as we are and their Admiral Commander had even sent a genome map of himself to prove it. Most thought it had been faked.
“I’m sorry,” was all Eva could say.
“Don’t make that mistake again.”
“I won’t.” She tried to sound as humble as she could. Was this just as sore a spot with the rest of the Hrwang? She’d have to try to find out.
“Do you believe in God?” he asked her.
Eva hadn’t been asked that for a while. She hadn’t thought about it for a while.
“Yes,” she finally said. She’d believed in him before, why not now?
“You were slow to answer. You are not religious.”
“No, I guess not.”
“I believe in the same God as you. He has many names. Each culture calls him something different, and some cultures have many names for his different manifestations and call them different gods, but they are all God.”
“We do the same.” She made sure she didn’t say, ‘Humans do the same.’
“God has created man in his image, has he not? It doesn’t matter what planet he created his children on. They are all in his image.”
“Are there other planets with humans on it, like you and me?” She wanted to get back on his good side. He relaxed a little, a tiny smile returning, and Eva knew she’d been successful.
“We believe the Universe is filled with them, although we only know of two others. The Rostarium are our allies and the Yalj are, sadly, extinct.”
Eva wondered who had made them extinct. Had the Hrwang rained meteors down on their planet also, destroying cities and killing millions? It reminded her that the man she danced with, the one she was trying to seduce, and who, in turn, was trying to seduce her, was her enemy. Her hands gripped his waist firmly and the tempo of the music increased and she had to remind herself to stay in character. It would be just as easy to hate this man as to like him.
He gripped her tightly, like she gripped him, and pulled her closer. They danced faster now, moving about the room, turning at times, swaying at others. She followed his lead, wondering if she had inadvertently done something in gripping him tighter that a Hrwang woman would do to signal her intentions.
His face was close now and she actually thought about killing him. If he was the leader, his assassination would be a loss. But she quickly discarded that notion. Someone else would step into his place, someone always did, and that someone would be less trusting. There would be no way an agent could get as close to them as she was now to the Lord Admiral. Plus, she’d never make it out of the building alive. There were simply too many soldiers. She knew if it had a purpose, the possibility existed she would need to sacrifice herself. But it seemed senseless at the moment and might hurt someone else’s chances of penetrating the organization.
She was best off continuing to follow the Lord Admiral’s lead. She made herself relax a little and that must have been another sign. The Lord Admiral pulled her closer, staring down into her eyes. She returned his stare and when he leaned closer she prepared herself to kiss him. But he kissed her forehead tenderly, his lips dwelling there, and then he pulled her close to himself and they stood in place and swayed to the music.
“It’s no secret,” he whispered, holding her, “that our fleet left our world two and a half years ago. I slept most of that time, of course.”
A medal poked her in the face where he held her, but she didn’t say anything.
“I like your dress,” he said, running a hand down her bare back. The material started a few inches above her waist and he moved his hand lower, holding it on her waist. He kissed her head.
Eva’s heart raced. Would she really go through with this? She had known it would be a possibility, tried to prepare herself mentally for it, but she had thought it might take more than one date. She also suddenly worried he might be like other ‘great’ men and only want her for one night, choosing woman after woman over the course of their careers. Would he discard her after their time together, or would he want more?
There was only one way to find out. She leaned back a little and turned her head up and kissed his mouth.
Eva knew she dreamed, but couldn’t stop the dream or change it. The Hrwang Lord Admiral’s hands were everywhere, touching her, grabbing her, squeezing her hard like the Utah border guard, Shay, had done. His hands turned to tentacles and there were eight and one tentacle went into one of her ears, boring into her brain. Another pushed into the other side and she felt pain and wanted to scream. She opened her mouth to do so and a third tentacle jammed into it, piercing the roof of her mouth.
She watched from the outside and the tentacle burst through the top of her head, brains and skull exploding everywhere.
She woke up.
The Lord Admiral slept peacefully next to her, on his stomach, most of a sheet wrapped around him. She shivered, just a little cold. He had pulled the sheet off of her in his sleep. She looked around in the dark and made out a blanket on the ground. She stepped softly onto the wooden floor, easing up off the bed, and walked slowly to the blanket. She picked it up and wrapped it around herself.
She tried to recall where her dress and shoes had ended up.
She walked slowly, remembering where a bathroom was, and tried not to kick anything on the way. She found the bathroom, went in, closed the door behind her, and turned a light on. The elegant bathroom reminded her of the kind found in opera houses and she knew she’d never seen a restroom like this before at Griffith Observatory. The Hrwang had done some serious renovations.
She couldn’t figure out why.
The toilets only had open front seats and no lids, just like in public restrooms. This probably was still a public restroom, only it had been made to look ornate. A shower had been added, but no tub. Eva had nowhere to sit, so she curled her blanket around herself and sat on the floor and cried.
She wasn’t sure how long she cried, but when she finally finished, she stood up to wash her face. She didn’t want to get the blanket wet, so she let it fall to the floor. Washing her face, she could see herself in the mirror. She inspected her body. There were no marks, no strange pocks forming on it, no evidence that she’d just had sex with an alien. He’d been as human as he had claimed, and she suddenly worried she could get pregnant. That couldn’t happen.
She washed her face, trying to make herself look presentable. She needed him to think she had really enjoyed the night they had just spent together and hoped there would be more.
She wondered if there would be, or what would happen next. There was no rule book for this sort of thing. She was just making things up as she went along.
Eva pulled the blanket up around herself and went back to bed.
The Lord Admiral sat on his bed, a sheet wrapped around his waist, lazily scratching his guest’s back. He moved his hand from her neck down her to her waist with each stroke, trailing light pink marks where he gently scratched her skin, each time tugging her blanket a little lower. She moaned softly in response, enjoying the attention.
The long pink marks faded slowly, then more appeared behind his fingers as he pulled them down. He admired her back. It might have been one of her best features. That, and her hair. He loved her hair.
Blonde was not a common hair color on his home world. They knew of the color, and some women bleached their hair to make it that color, but natural blondes were few and far between. The difference between bleach
ed and natural was obvious, and just thinking about this woman’s hair color excited him. Everyone would be jealous if he returned with a blonde trophy.
He wondered what to do with this one. He knew what he wanted to do next, again, but he thought of what came after. He should probably just have a soldier take her up into the foothills and shoot her. She knew too much now to let her go.
It seemed a shame. Her lovely hair, her lovely, strong, athletic body. Her beautiful back that he began to caress now, leaning over her and pushing into her muscles as she moaned with pleasure. And that beautiful blonde hair. Would he find another woman like her? The evening had been pleasant and she learned quickly. Not all women were that intelligent, yet as innocent of power as she was. Or was she?
“Up a little, to the right,” she whispered and he moved his hands in obedience, rubbing and caressing.
“Perfect,” she whispered.
He decided he had two choices of what to do with her. He wondered what she would think if she knew her very life depended on her response to his next question.
Eva enjoyed the scratching and the firm back rub the alien now gave her. She almost felt guilty at enjoying it so much. Part of her did feel guilty still, guilty at violating commandments she’d been taught as a child, guilty at doing something she knew her parents wouldn’t approve of, but it wasn’t her first time and besides, she was doing it for a purpose. A greater good. God would have to find some way to forgive her, if that was important to him.
She contemplated what she should do next while she made sure the Lord Admiral knew right now that she was enjoying his caresses. She felt gratitude that the alien was gentle in his actions, not trying to hurt her or treat her roughly.
He softly pushed on her side and she rolled over. He grinned.
“I have a question, my dear,” he said.
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