Voyage

by C. Paul Lockman

  Our food arrived, brought by another delicious blonde. who quickly ducked under the table and began slow sucking on my cock. I was nearly ready to explode. The second girl was even better than the first, matching deep sucks with shorter, lighter strokes. Falik was coming, her pussy tensing around three fingers thrust inside. The girl then turned to lick my balls, and then I knew I couldn't hold out any longer. I released an arc of sperm which covered the girl's faces, the blonde girl’s forehead, and spilled down both their chests, onto aprons and onto the floor.

  She girls emerged, slightly sheepish and coated in semen. "That", I said, motioning to the ropes of sperm on the blonde girls' faces, "is a facial". Falik looked great, obviously very satisfied by the other girl under the table. We ate small, tasty appetizers from around the system: more of the sharp, tofu-like herb we had for lunch; slices of marinated vegetables which had a lively, Pop Rock effect on the tongue; a fresh, local bread which just melted in the mouth, topped with a creamy spread, not unlike horseradish. I took it all in, basking in a post-orgasmic glow and loving Falik’s company more and more, as I got to know her.

  “So why biological sciences?” I asked between mouthfuls.

  “Curiosity, I suppose”, she answered, putting down her water glass. “My father was a genetic surgeon”. My eyebrows rose. “You must find that strange, but all of the vegetables you’re eating began as something else.” She picked up a slice of the Pop Rock cabbage. “This had a much milder taste, before. And grew much more slowly. And this”, she taught me, motioning to the bread, “is based on a grain which was nearly useless when we first found it, on the sixth planet. Intensive work was needed.”

  I reminded her that, back home on Earth, controversy surrounds such research, with widespread concern as to potential health side-effects. She efficiently doused my worries. “You’ve only been working with DNA for a few years”, she said, taking care not to dismiss humanity’s efforts, “whereas we’ve had thousands of years’ experience in manipulating life forms. Our own bodies, and behaviours”, she seemed sad to admit, “are examples”.

  Falik paid with a thumbprint and we grabbed a taxi outside. Gliding once more through Takanli’s soaring architecture and broad park land, I nervously put my arm around her, like a teenager coming back from a date. Silly, really, given the lavish amounts of great sex we’d been having. But, I felt it best to go slowly, to respect this amazing, beautiful girl, not to risk offending her with hastiness or unwise assumptions.

  “Sleep now”, she said as I left the cab at the Institute. “Dream of me”.

  Chapter XVI: The Council

  The next morning was important, and saw an early start. I was in a cab with Falik within half an hour of waking, and our schedule was dominated by a major event for any Takanlian.

  On our way to the Council buildings, Falik decided that she was jealous of all the time the blonde waitress had enjoyed with my cock, and insisted on blowing me. Her sweet, warm mouth worked wonderfully over my cock while I stared happily out of the window. The city rolled by, large green parks flanked by skyscrapers, big pedestrian areas, a couple of open-air concerts. I loved it here. Falik brought me close and then quickly straddled me and slipped my hardness into her cunt. We came together, quite hard, moments before we arrived at the council. She loves her quickies, this one.

  The council building was vast. Three massive towers emerged from a ten-storey pyramid base. It was perhaps the most amazing architectural experience I'd ever had. Part of the pyramid formed the entrance, so we ascended escalators and swarmed in with a mass of other beings of all kinds. The brown clouds were back; vicious flashes shot to and fro, surely signs of an argument. Several of the tall guards I had met on arrival were there, looking docile and sleepy but still brimming with latent menace.

  Falik explained our purpose to one of the hundreds of white-clad, bald, male receptionists, who handed her a glowing red domino and motioned through the security checks. We walked through banks of scanners, five or six, watched carefully by the glowering guards. "I wouldn't try anything with these guys around", Falik whispered. "The first time I was here, I saw a guy who wasn't welcome, for some reason, getting escorted away. Big, tall humanoid, like you. He was crying like a baby".

  Beyond the scanners and scowling security humanoids were the standard array of elevators, some encased in tubes which extended outside the building, others disappearing up through the tall, metallic ceiling and into the myriad rooms above. Falik led me through some doors which swished open automatically - I still thought of Star Trek every time I saw that - and we ascended with two of the guards.

  "There are some matters of protocol of which you should be aware", Falik warned. "You are about to meet the highest authority, and the wisest minds, in our system. They have been trained throughout their lives to meet the enormous challenges of governing a complex, fractious body of disparate beings. Answer their questions directly and honestly - they will surely know if you are lying. And", she leaned in close, "try not to show surprise. They are famously clairvoyant and are seldom surprised by anything. They despise it in others."

  The elevator stopped. God knows how high up we were, but I sensed a faint movement in the building. My wary glances at the floor and walls alerted Falik. "You are so safe you wouldn't believe it. Come on through, they're probably ready for us." The guards flanked us as we approached another reception desk, staffed by an eight-armed humanoid who gave new meaning to 'multi-tasking'. While taking our red security dominos and processing them with two hands, two more were expertly leafing through filing cards, two more were typing and the final two were assembling a morning snack. Its eyes constantly shifted, every half-second, from one task to another, like a juggler at the circus.

  Once processed, we were gestured through to a wide waiting area dominated by tall, black double doors. There was a low hum, slightly ominous, as though we were within a great machine which lay dormant, ready. Guards flanked the giant, monolithic double doors, armed with tall spears. The tips seemed to match the electric hum of the room. I decided I didn't want to get poked by one.

  Falik was tapping her feet, slightly uneasy, it seemed to me. "Have you met these people before", I wanted to know.

  Falik shook her head. "They are almost deified in our culture. You hardly even see them on TV or the Net, they're so highly revered. A bit like the pope back where you are from, only more so."

  "Are they spiritual leaders, like him?"

  Falik thought about this. "What if I tell you that every decent thought, every kind action that you see on this planet stems from a worldview and sense of morality taught to us, and protected, by these people? Would that give you an idea how much they are respected?"

  I suddenly felt very small, like a child backstage at his favourite guitarist's rock concert, shyly hoping for an autograph. While I puzzled at the reputation of these people, a faint crack appeared between the heavy, black doors and they began to open. Light poured out into the dimly lit room. A figure, unbelievably tiny against the size of the portal, swept out, cloak flowing. A voice began.

  "Those having business with the Council are asked to step forward." Falik visibly gulped. My newly empowered brain told me that this phrase was among the most emotive in Takanli culture. An audience with these people was a once-in-a-lifetime event for a tiny portion of the population. Goosebumps appeared on her forearms. We walked forward together towards the blinding light between the doors and were met by the cloaked official.

  ID checks were performed, once more, and we were ushered into the main chamber. It was a half-amphitheatre consisting of a deep blue stage flanked by rows of seats, bench-like but separated into booths which were festooned with screens. Delegates sat in these booths, occasional flashes of blue thought emanating forth and meeting at a blue semi-circular orb at the centre of the stage. The colours within the orb were a masterpiece. Around the edge of the stage were twelve elegant, high-backed seats, each decorated with strange, alien designs which were, I knew,
representative of the senator's home system. One was bedecked with screaming, green dragons. The senator was himself an aquiline lizard, slumped huffily in his seat, tail curled up behind him. To his right was a humanoid in luminous red robes, pale-faced and intent.

  The official made his way to his own seat in the front row and left us standing together before the blue orb. A voice began, seemingly projected from the orb, low and calm, like a documentary narrator.

  "Welcome, human being from Earth, to Takanli and to this meeting of our council. Your cooperation so far has been outstanding, and we look forward to a mutually fruitful relationship. Please make yourselves comfortable". Chairs appeared behind us and we sat, eye-level with the orb, which was swirling fascinatingly.

  "Your time here has been enjoyable, so I understand". He paused. I guessed it was my turn.

  "Yes, sir, it has." There was a rustle among the delegates. I glanced round but Falik smiled to reassure me. "It’s just your voice, and your language. Remember how new you are to them." The room quietened and the orb spoke again.

  "It is our wish that, under the auspice of this Council, you undertake a diplomatic mission to the Outer Rim. This mission will provide great opportunities for the furtherment of peace in this dangerous area of our system, and it will be personally beneficial to you on a number of levels. You are permitted one rotation to consider this offer and report back to the council. Everything you read in the synopsis applies also to Dr. Falik, who is to accompany you."

  A red cube appeared in mid-air two feet from my chest and solidified into what I knew was a memory unit. It had a quantum capacity, which meant the entire artistic and literary works of the Universe, or a movie covering 10% of all human memory and life, could fit on one cube. There would be a lot of reading to do.

  "We look forward to seeing you tomorrow. In the meantime, I understand that special arrangements are now being made for your accommodation, and that you should be more comfortable. Go now, in peace".

  We rose, bowed to the Councillors, who all inclined their heads in return, and left through the massive black doors. Behind us, delegates were moving onto the next matter, which sounded like a tricky hydrogen-farm dispute around the fifth planet, Betanuria. I guess the news was included in the Boffin's implants. I could have delivered a lecture on the dispute, but had never thought of it before.

  Falik had calmed a bit by the time we left the Council chambers and were back down on street level. It was a warm, slightly humid day, and the air was pleasingly fragrant. "Come on, let's get back to my place and download this cube. I can't believe they're sending us on a mission - did you understand what he said?" She was excited, skipping down the alley to her apartment building.

  There could be no coincidence that the Boffin’s first factual implants had covered Hephage, Jakalzzi and Gaspiri, precisely the background information I would need on this trip. Had the Council informed him of the mission, in advance? I understood that they were clairvoyant, on some level, but deciding to place this burden on my shoulders, mere days after my first alien contact... that showed either utter certainty in their view of the future, or a foolhardily optimistic assessment of my diplomatic skills. There was the inescapable sense that events had run ahead of me, and that I would need to run very quickly indeed to catch up.

  "Why me?" I asked, as Falik fumbled with her keys.

  "They know you're a powerful empath, and have a system of feelings we can't guess at. The more a negotiator is able to perceive the position of each party, the more quickly a dispute can be resolved. So much is left unsaid at these meetings, for the sake of politeness. It’s like your Korea dispute - lots of talking, but no real substance.” She unlocked the door and hurried inside. “All superficial. You can get beyond that, if you have enough information. That's what this is about." She held the cube aloft and then slotted it into her home media system.

  One wall became a display, showing a red 'loading' screen as the cube became wreathed in soft, blue strands of energy. We sat on the sofa together, hand in hand.

  It was a lengthy documentary on the Outer Rim planets - those which orbited further out than the Jovian giant, Gaj – and we focused on the 11th and 12th planets, Gaspiri and Jakalzzi, quickly absorbing the early history of the dispute between Elders and Raptors on one side, and the Jakalzzian public on the other.

  Wise, respected and tasked with the temporal and spiritual leadership of Jakalzzi, the Elders were an ancient caste, quite distinct from the body of the population. Although they were required to obey Jakalzzian law, incidences of corruption and vice were relatively common; this was seen generally by the public as the inevitable price of doing business. Power corrupts, they reasoned, but without doubt, the planet was better off with the Elders in power. Communes, off-world habitats and other attempts to demonstrate innate leadership skills among other castes had ubiquitously met with disaster. The Elders were Jakalzzi’s past, her present and almost certainly her future, provided that their excesses, never more serious than a smattering of graft, perjury and nepotism, were kept in check.

  All of that changed as a result of a rather fetching love story. One of the less experienced of the Elders, a writer and poet with the equally fetching appellation Florino, was sent to Gaspiri on an exchange program organized through a cultural centre. There he met, befriended, and was comprehensively seduced by a Raptor of quite breathtaking beauty. Put aside, I was urged, the reptilian connotations of their name in the post-Jurassic Park world; each of these creatures is simply a model of humanoid perfection: tall and muscular, voluptuously curved, their breasts were magnificent in their hugeness, limbs imposing in their tanned, supple strength, and buttocks pert and perfect. These attributes alone would have any red-blooded male – and surely, young Florino was no more than that – weak at the knees and ready to sin.

  But the Raptors had evolved a secret weapon, one so powerful as to derail local politics for millennia and render pliant and dependent a whole caste of hithertofore upstanding Jakalzzians. Between their breasts, and ever described in tones of wonder and not a little fear, was their Third Eye. Science has yet to unravel its secrets, but its power over men is legend, akin to the siren song of maritime myth on earth. The Elders, beginning with Florino, were helpless under its spell. Before long, there was an exodus of their caste as rumours spread of fabulous pleasures to be had; stories told of endless orgasms, of torrents of sperm so fantastically huge as to defy belief. Every Elder on Jakalzzi wanted a piece, and they left in their droves.

  The effect on Jakalzzian society was sudden, dramatic and overwhelmingly negative. It was as if the whole British parliament and civil service downed tools and headed for the hills. Economic life ground to a halt. Political stalemate was permanent, and a society which had thrived intellectually was thrown into a mini dark age as professors, university administrators and lawyers were suddenly nowhere to be found. Quite understandably, there was a massive upwelling of bitter public resentment.

  Eschewing the referendum required under Jakalzzi’s constitution, the Elders passed a law permitting intermarriage between their caste and the Raptors, which merely catalyzed both their exodus and the public’s fury. To make matters worse, the sudden power vacuum heralded centuries of quite mindless sectarianism; various flavours of religious fanaticism swept the planet, and powerful ideologues with large followings caused mayhem. Few voices urged restraint.

  Interplanetary communications between these two remote bodies is tricky, which was just as well. Jakalzzi’s fractious, divided public could find only one thing on which they consistently agreed: the Elders should be punished for their selfish rejection of Jakalzzian values and their pussy-whipped subservience to an over-sexed, freakish race of interlopers. Revenge was planned, and was truly served cold; simply to nudge the Frejudium Cannon into the correct orbit took three hundred years. By the time it was in firing position above Gaspiri, however, the honeymoon period was well and truly over. A number of Elders had died of physical exhaustion, drained
of their fluids to a simply fatal extent, and rumours spread among the caste of a plot to either assassinate Elders in order to take control – of what, it was never clear – or to use their dangerously copious ejaculate in some sinister science experiment. Neither was true; the Raptors simply grew tired of the spineless men they had unwittingly enslaved, and the marriages steadily exchanged ardour for icy suspicion.

  The Cannon, then, was obliged to move on in search of more satisfying game. Bucking the trend, several small communities of Elder-Raptor couples had decided to strike out into the cosmos. Many were never seen again. Some crash-landed on moons and made the best of it. By far the largest of these communities headed for the moons of Bephra, where a significant colony was established. Finally, the deranged and vengeful Jakalzzian leadership – never more than a fleeting coalition of fractious parties and nutty religious groups – had a meaningful target for their orbiting death ray. In perhaps the system’s saddest, darkest, most avoidable and most deeply insane chapter, the Cannon was unleashed on the fragile surface of Bephra’s largest moon. None survived.

  Exultant but unquenched, the Jakalzzian power structure sought further bloodshed. Other colonies were sought out – those on free-floating moons and on battered starships, some of which had quite desperately accelerated to system escape velocity – and targeted for destruction. It was into this utter fucking mess that I was to be dropped, in the hope of preventing further calamity