The accusation doesn’t seem to throw N’Maryah though. She simply cuts her eyes at me and commands, “You will translate my words so that your people can understand me.”
Then before I can answer, she announces, “My name is N’Maryah N’Vaise of the Line Neixal.” The way she lifts her chin when she says this, you’d think she was the queen of Xalthuria and not a prisoner who’d just been unceremoniously dumped here. “I have a translation chip and can understand everything you say. But this onyx girl will serve as my translator.”
“My name is Zinnia,” I tell her.
She looks down her ridged nose to hit me with a scathing look. “Names are not needed for you to complete your translation duties, Onyx Girl.”
Wait…what did she just say to me?
“No need for a translator, Mariah,” Dan tells her, while I’m still blinking over the Xalthurian female’s audacity. “I was given a translation chip during the prime minister’s—I mean the former prime minister’s survey visit, so that I could escort him around. That’s just one of the reasons the good leaders of New Terrhan recently chose me as their new High Leader after Henry Huang’s untimely passing.”
What?! I look around until I find Wang-Lei, Henry’s son, standing near the front of the crowd. He’s a great, affable guy who occasionally tells me about sci-fi books I’ve just got to check out and can often be seen doing magic tricks for kids in the village. And unlike a lot of the humans he treats all the kids the same, whether their full human or swirlie. I always thought he’d make a great High Leader when Henry died or decided to step down.
But he just shakes his head helplessly when I catch his eyes. So apparently those fools on the settlement board really did decide to give Dan more power than he already had.
I can only imagine the kind of bribes that went into making that happen. And I inwardly curse our Xal escort for not having a translation chip. Kira needs to know the amenable old man who happily negotiated the New Terrhan Accord and had made her promises about taking the senior citizens off the field work rotations has been replaced with my tyrannical brother.
“Fine,” N’Maryah says with a dismissive click, accepting my brother’s position of power way more easily than me. “You will announce me to your people.”
Dan gives her a smile that comes nowhere near his eyes, then calls out to the crowd. “She wants me to announce her all formal like to my people. Guess she still doesn’t understand….”
He returns his gaze to the Xalthurian female standing at his feet. “You have been charged with treason for plotting to overthrow the Kel, Your other crimes include…” Dan names each charge like he’s throwing stones: “ABDUCTION, CONSPIRACY to KILL the Kel’s intended and AIDING and ABETTING INHUMANE experiments on the GOOD PEOPLE of New Terrhan.”
“I was cleared of that last charge. I only knew of the existence of my father’s lab. I, in no way, helped him run it.”
Her clicks and hisses can’t be understood by the angry crowd, and Dan doesn’t bother to translate them. “The point is, you belong to us now, Mariah. You did us humans dirty, so we’re the ones who get to decide your punishment”
N’Maryah’s nose ridges ripple once. But to her credit that’s the only indication she gives that she’s at all ruffled by Dan’s declaration.
Lifting her chin even higher, she announces, “I have decided to take a human male as my mate and protector. In accordance, I would like a private audience with each of your currently unmated Settlement Leaders, so that I might choose who might receive the honor of my marriage pact.”
I raise my eyebrows at the six-foot-plus alien, both shocked and impressed. I’ve got to give it to N’Maryah. Her A and B plans didn’t work out, but her Plan C is pretty solid. According to our settlement’s laws, once a woman is married, she becomes the full responsibility of her husband. That means it’s up to him and not the rest of the colony to punish her for breaking any of the settlement’s rules.
The rule was implemented so that the settlement board wouldn’t be flooded with the minor infractions of our laws usually perpetuated by women. This delegation freed them to handle the more significant violations most often perpetuated by men in their monthly court. Statistically, the law made sense. But I doubt Henry, and the other leaders predicted the day an alien female, would be accused of high treason against one of us.
Dan’s face twist with annoyance as he tells the crowd, “She wants to get out of her punishment by getting married to one of us instead.”
The crowd immediately returns to jeering, but N’Maryah just stands there, her face perfectly placid. As if she’s simply waiting patiently for everyone to do exactly what she wants.
“Hold on, hold on. Quiet down now!” Dan waves his hands palm down, and the crowd returns to a low simmer.
“Thing is, Mariah, we know our human girls have decided all of sudden that fucking your alien males is a good idea. Can’t really blame them for that. That’s how they’ve been conditioned. And Henry was so desperate for food when Kira came down here a few weeks ago, he didn’t take into full account how little us human men would benefit from this new deal with the Xals. But us males are done getting left out in the cold in all these negotiations.”
Quite a few of the men cheer, but I place a hand over my belly not liking where this is leading. Dan’s words clear up much of my confusion about his sudden appointment. I now completely understand how he got the older members of the mostly male board to elect him High Leader instead of Wang-Lei.
“Where’s our extra rations? Where’s our access to Xalthurian technology just for spreading our legs like the girls do?” Dan demands, further riling up the men in the crowd.
Nausea roils through my stomach, as the atmosphere about me gets stifling. But this has nothing to do with the baby in me. New Terrhan was on the brink of something vile.
He sneers down at N’Maryah. “And what would any of us get from marrying you? Let’s not forget that your own men don’t want to fuck you anymore because you can’t have any babies. And yes, sure, you’re interesting to look at, if you’re into fucking somebody that looks like a piece of jewelry. But most of us prefer real women for wives. Pretty and petite women we don’t have to worry about beating us down like a man if they get mad because we came home a little later than usual after a night out with our buddies. ”
The men laugh and jeer and yeah. And I can tell I was right about having that beautiful girl problem back on her planet. While I’m well-acquainted with how narrow the beauty standard in our settlement can be, I can see she’s never perceived of a world where she wasn’t a highly-valued prize.
For once she stays quiet, and I don’t blame her. I’ve never been great at figuring out how to respond to my brother’s crude remarks either.
But her shocked silence only gives Dan more fuel to continue. “Tell you what we’ll do for you, Mariah. We’ll take you to the Leader House, and a bunch of us males will run a circle bang on you like the Xalthurians used to do on our girls. Then if one of us decides we’ve got a taste for dry alien pussy, maybe he’ll agree to marry you.”
I hear a lot of softs gasp behind me, and I gape up at Dan on the dais, shocked by his ugly suggestion. There are children here. And two wrongs don’t make a right.
“My name is N’Maryah.” the willowy alien beside me repeats, her nose ridges now vibrating with rage. “And I will not…I will not be used like that.”
“She says she won’t be used like that!” Dan announces to the crowd. “I guess she really does think she’s better than our women. And that makes me think we definitely need to make the circle bang her official sentence for trying to kill Kira. We’ll call it a Punishment Ceremony. What do you say?”
Most of the men, and quite a few of the women cheer for the idea of forcing our Xalthurian prisoner to endure the same thing us humans did during the Breeding Ceremony.
But the many hybrid daughters in the crowd, appear uncomfortable by both human and Xal standards. Their nose ridges r
ipple like their alien fathers, while they hug themselves like their human mothers. The cheering human women might not see it yet, but they do, and so do I.
This sets a dangerous precedent. Especially for the first set of Xalthurian hybrids who will turn twenty-one next year, the official breeding age. Without husbands to protect them, what will their punishments entail when they run afoul of the settlement’s laws?
And where will this new narrative of Dan’s about human males being left in the cold lead? Nowhere good, I suspect.
I shake my head, not believing what I’m about to do next. But in the end, I know I can’t just stand by while this madness unfolds.
Chapter Thirty
“Stop! Stop!” I yell up to Dan. “You can’t do that to her!” The crowd quiets at my words, and I once again look to Wang-Lei, the man who should have been named our High Leader. But he just shakes his head at me, like I’ve sprouted Kaidorian horns. Probably because I’m doing the unthinkable. Defending my best friend’s number one enemy.
“Zinnia Njeri, is that you?” a voice asks in the crowd, seeming to see me for the first time.
“We was told you were dead!” another says.
“You’re pregnant, too. Just like Queen Kira—hey, where have you been?”
I forgot, the Xalthurians are still working on a planet-to-planet communication system. So while Kira was able to announce N’Maryah’s banishment sentence during her last visit to New Terrhan, there had been no way to let the settlement know I was not only alive, but returning to the planet six months pregnant. “I was…um…also on Xalthuria. But now I’m back.”
“Are you some kind of royalty, too?” another voice calls out, without missing a beat. I guess after having Kira come back as their alien overlord’s new queen, me returning from the dead isn’t so hard for them to process.
“No, I’m not royalty,” I answer, my voice firm. “I’m just trying to do what’s right. And this Punishment Circle idea isn’t us. We’re a peaceful and kind people—that’s what Kira has been telling the Xalthurian court for months now in order to advocate for us.”
“Maybe those Xals sent her here to spy on us,” a voice I recognize as Phil’s calls back.
“No, they didn’t!” I assure the crowd, “I asked to come back to New Terrhan. And now I’m speaking as a concerned citizen. Our new accord is only a few weeks old and Kira told me how much work it took to get the Xalthurians to see humans as a reasonable race. Which we are! If we vote Dan’s Punishment Circle into law, then that will only prove to them we’re a bunch of savages in need of a strong hand. Not a race who would rise to the challenge of new world building if we just had the resources.”
A murmur ripples through the crowd.
And I can tell I’m swaying them.
But then Dan says, “Well, I for one would rather give these Xals a taste of their own medicine than bow and scrape to them like we’re their slaves and concubines, even though this is OUR planet.”
The angry rumble starts back up.
“They have technology beyond our wildest dreams, even by old planet standards. Do you really think we’re going to win in a fight against them?” I shout up at Dan. Then I turn back to the rest of the crowd to add, “We crashed in the Xalthurian’s solar system. We have no weapons and no rights whatsoever to this planet, except for those given to us as part of the New Terrhan Accord. Also, if word gets back to the Xalthurians that we’ve decided to use forced sex as punishment, what’s to keep them from doing the same to us?”
“That’s right,” Dan cries, spittle flying from his mouth. “They could just decide any day now to use their superior technology to keep us down forever. Which is why instead of listening to this race traitor sister of mine, we need to vote in this Punishment Circle, take back the colony ship, and figure out how to use the weapons in there to defend our planet!”
I shake my head up at him. His logic makes no sense. But the crowd cheers him anyway. Seduced by the idea of a power we haven’t possessed in over two decades.
“My father was right about you hu’mans,” N’Maryah hisses and clicks at me. “Every word in that survey was correct.”
Frustration swells through me as the crowd continues to cheer like maniacs. I’d read the former prime minister’s survey during my three weeks at the royal palace.
It had been an incendiary listing of the failures of human civilizations, with many of the entries pointing to situations just like this. Incidences in our old planet history where we loving humans had turned cruel and violent, falling under the spell of short term mob think, as opposed to working together as the Xalthurians did to advance their civilization as a whole.
I glare at Dan, hating him more than ever for proving the former prime minister right. Under Henry’s gentle leadership, we’d been developing into a peaceful settlement—one Kira had promised, if properly resourced, could thrive and grow, just like the Xalthurians.
But Dan is the worst kind of populist leader. Someone who would incite his people to their certain deaths, just to prove he was in charge.
“Let’s put this Punishment Circle to a vote,” Dan says before I can argue with him any further.
N’Maryah visibly blanches and her nose ridges quiver. I’m sure she recognizes that even with her superior alien strength, there’s no way she could prevent this punishment circle.
And there are so many more arguments to be made, but I doubt Dan will give me the space to make them. I’ve run out of time, I realize.
“Who will agree to marry this Xalthurian?” I shout desperately before Dan can call for the first all in favor vote. “What man among you is forward thinking enough to know we can’t allow even this woman to be punished so cruelly if we wish to become an advance society like the ones we watch on the sci-fi entertainments?”
Total silence meets my question.
Probably because Dan did such a great job of setting up N’Maryah as other and slamming her beauty.
“Hell no!” Phil answers, seemingly on behalf of every unmarried man in the crowd. “She’s taller than almost every man here, and any of us who marry her dried up alien cunt won’t be able to have kids!”
Many of the men nod, because apparently they don’t see the hypocrisy of discriminating against the infertile Xalthurian females, who have also been “left out in the cold” by the new New Terrhan Accord.
“I know a lot of you want to have kids. But maybe there’s someone who doesn’t? Someone with a big heart who doesn’t want to see the mostly good men of New Terrhan make this mistake. I only need one. Please!” I call out, my voice cracking.
More silence and Dan smiles, knowing he’s won the day. “Okay, all in favor of—” he starts to say.
“I’ll do it. I’ll take her as my wife.”
The crowd gasps.
And so do I.
It’s Wang-Lei who spoke. Wang-Lei who volunteered to go childless in order to save N’Maryah from the proposed Punishment Ceremony.
I blink at him. Not because he stands almost a foot shorter than N’Maryah, but because he loves children. I think about all the magic shows he’s done for the kids in our settlement. Also, the orphanage girl he lost to the Breeding Ceremony, the one whose hybrid baby he would have been willing to raise as his own. And my heart breaks.
“Anyone else?” I ask hopefully. Of all the men I want to bless this village with progeny, Wang-Lei is at the top of the list.
But no one else volunteers.
Only Wang-Lei comes forward in the answering silence. “I’ll do it,” he says again. Then he looks up, way up at N’Maryah and tells her. “I’ll marry you, if that’s what it takes to save you from the Punishment Circle.”
N’Maryah looks down at him for a rigid beat, then asks me. “What is this small male’s position within this community?”
Thank goodness she didn’t say that loud enough for Dan to hear. I give her a withering look as I answer, “He’s in charge of maintenance on the colony. He’s also the son of the forme
r High Leader, which means he now has a position on the settlement board.”
“If he was the son of the leader why would he toil upon your archaic colony ship?”
Oh. My. Moons. “Because this is New Terrhan and until recently we’ve been scraping to get by. Everyone above the age of sixteen works here.” I shake my head at her. “He’s also a super nice guy. And you’re lucky he volunteered. Polyamory is against our settlement’s rules, so this means he won’t be able to marry anyone else as long as you’re both alive. He’s doing this to save you, N’Maryah. So please don’t fuck this up by being a total entitled bitch about accepting his proposal.”
N’Maryah’s eyes flash as her eyes travel down Wang-Lei’s thin body. He’s got a few muscles from climbing around the colony ship, but he’s nothing like the seven foot plus, totally ripped Xalthurians.
I brace myself for her nasty answer to Wang-Lei’s proposal.
But then she raises a hand to her ridges and says, “Yes, I will honor you with my agreement to marriage.”
Wang-Lei looks to me for the translation.
“She said yes,” I inform him with a tight smile. “Now pinky kiss before Dan tries to call a vote for something even crazier than the Punishment Circle.”
“Little finger kiss?” N’Maryah repeats. “I do not understand.”
Wang-Lei doesn’t have a translator, but he answers her question when he hooks his right pinky finger around hers and lifts it into the air between them.
“Wow…claws,” he observes with a nervous chuff, when he sees her curved talons. But he drops a quick kiss on the knuckle of her smallest finger, nonetheless.
The crowd audibly boos all around us, but somehow Wang-Lei manages a sickly smile for his new bride.
“You have to do the same to him,” I tell N’Maryah.
Her nose ripples with what I can only assume is disgust, but she drops a quick kiss on Wang-Lei’s knuckle, before asking me. “Now what?”
“That’s it. You’re married,” I answer with a shrug.
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