Sarai

by Jarli Grey

  That started him thinking of his brothers again. He was worried sick about them, knowing they thought he was dead — they’d lost their parents in a car crash three years earlier and they were pretty damn close. They’d had to be, with the farm and all the work it required. Matt, his oldest brother, had been adamant that Jamie should go to university — he wanted to be a doctor and his first term at university was due to start after the summer break. Matt had already hired a couple of farmhands to replace him and Theo as well, when he took up his new teaching job. Guess that was another dream shot down the missile tube thanks to the Zill.

  Jamie shivered, the warmth of the day receding as he remembered the creatures that had come after him.

  The Zill. Giant insects, with carapaces harder than steel. They still looked and behaved more like wasps, rapacious and cunning.

  Thank god for Alekyn and his pard. Even trapped here, so far from home, he couldn’t help but be grateful — here he was, experiencing something no-one, as far as he knew, from Earth had ever experienced before.

  Alien life.

  It was mind-blowing. People had speculated and argued about extraterrestrial life for centuries, and it turned out to be, well, more or less, like life on Earth. People — okay, aliens — doing exactly the same sorts of things people — okay, humans — had always done. Being born, living, loving, fighting, dying. And all the bits in between.

  Instead of nothing being new under the sun, it really was a case of nothing being new under any suns, in any galaxy, in any universe, anywhere.

  Which didn’t change his basic problem. Getting home. He stared morosely at something bright and suspiciously butterfly-like fluttering around the softly pink and mauve roses and sighed heavily. It wasn’t Alekyn’s fault the Zill had come for Jamie. It was his fault Jamie was stuck on this planet god-knew-only how many light years from Earth. So far, Alekyn hadn’t said anything more about Jamie seeing his brothers, only that he was talking to his superiors about a number of things, including Jamie and his desire to go home.

  He was beginning to think he’d never leave the damn den let alone find his way home.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it.

  No.

  The worst of it was that he was fast falling totally in love with Alekyn — the nights spent in his bed curled up comfortably together, the unbelievably good sex, which happened more or less whenever they looked at each other, with or without a handy nearby flat surface. He grinned wryly. So far Alekyn’s pardmates — who were also his housemates and brothers, as it turned out — hadn’t interrupted their lovemaking, but that was increasingly embarrassingly likely. He wouldn’t have said he was backwards coming forwards about sex — he was pretty darn normal, a nineteen-year-old male whose preoccupation with fucking was high — but lately sex had become an obsession.

  Sex with Alekyn, his catman. He couldn’t keep his hands off Alekyn. Even just thinking about his Sarat, made threads of desire twist in his spine and lower belly and his dick tent the front of the loose pants he wore.

  To distract himself from thinking about sex with Alekyn, he thought about the genetic modification his body had been subjected to — he didn’t feel any different and as far as he could tell he didn’t look any different. No boobs or, he paled, periods. He was getting a bit soft around the midriff, quite a distinct little pooch going on there — he needed some exercise but Alekyn didn’t seem to mind Jamie’s thickening waist: he just rubbed it thoughtfully and purred a little Naferi love song, which had reduced Jamie to a pile of compliant goo.

  He desperately wanted to see more of this new world than he could see from the exterior windows, which just showed an orderly street scene complete with gardens and nice-looking residences, but Alekyn and his pardmates didn’t seem willing to take him anywhere. Maybe they thought he’d make a run for it, but where exactly was he going to run? It wasn’t as though he could just stick his thumb out and hitchhike home. As far as he could tell, the Naferi didn’t use cars, although he’d heard two of them — Bram and Eled, he thought they were — talking about riding maffen, whatever the hell they were. Some kind of animal, he gathered, but since he’d never seen a maffen and wouldn’t know how to ride one if he fell over it, it all seemed a bit moot.

  “Shit,” he muttered and stood up. He was going out of his brain with boredom.

  He headed towards the pard’s library, which was in a huge room overlooking gardens that tumbled down the hill at front of the den. He’d been in there a couple of times, mostly sitting quietly while Alekyn read or used an e-tab to browse the compnet, which Jamie gathered was some sort of internet. He’d asked to use one, thinking he could find out more about his captors and their planet, but Alekyn had just shaken his head. “Later, perhaps, my sarai,” he’d said dismissively.

  Jamie sighed. He had to find a way home, had to escape the almost overwhelming need he felt even when just thinking about being with Alekyn.

  The books in the study — and they were books — were written in a gracefully flowing script that reminded Jamie of Arabic calligraphy. Naturally he couldn’t read it — it seemed the translator in his brain was only good for spoken words.

  Or maybe the Naferi didn’t believe in educating their sarai, which made sense in a morally distorted, they-are-only-slaves sort of way. Things like compliance and the requisite number of orifices, he reckoned, would be higher on the list of desired sex-slave attributes than literacy, which might lead to things like having the wherewithal to plan an escape from a life of fucktoy enslavement.

  After all, how could he navigate a way home if he couldn’t read signs or whatever to help him on his way?

  When he wandered in, he found the study already occupied. Bram was there, absorbed in reading something on his e-tab, occasionally making notes. A pile of papers and books sat on the table near him, obviously being used as reference materials. Jamie stood silently, sizing him up. Bram was something of an enigma — he was much quieter than Eled and far less dominant than Tig, who tended, as Alekyn’s second in charge, to act as something of an enforcer. Jamie had the feeling he’d never have gotten away with anything if Tig had claimed him.

  But Bram…Jamie hadn’t really talked to him at all, despite the fact that all the pardmates were evidently invested in “getting a human” of their own.

  He guessed they just liked the way he looked or something.

  “So, Bram,” he plopped himself down on a nearby couch, “What are you reading, man?”

  Bram looked up, unsurprised. Jamie had been super-quiet in his approach, but all the Naferi had acute hearing, probably because of those large catlike ears.

  “I am researching astro-historical material, Alekyn-sarai,” he murmured and flicked a long dark tress of hair back over his shoulder.

  Jamie grimaced internally, feeling anger pinch at him. There it was again — no one called him by his name. It was as if his identity had been erased and now he only existed as an extension to Alekyn, a chattel rather than a person, which was all in keeping with the sex-slave thing.

  He gnawed on his bottom lip. It was demeaning being considered property. Now he knew how women and other slaves had felt in the olden days.

  “What’s astro-history when it’s home?” he kept his voice light and curious, hoping that deflected any potential suspicions. No, I’m not secretly acquiring any sort of knowledge to help me get away from here. “I’ve never heard of it.”

  Bram rested his e-tab on the desk. “That is not surprising. After all, your species is not very advanced, Alekyn-sarai.”

  Condescending bastard. Jamie resisted the urge to throw the nearest heavy object at him.

  “Is that so?” He smiled through gritted teeth. “Perhaps you could educate this representative of a not very advanced species in astro-history?”

  Bram didn’t pick up on his sarcasm. “It involves analyzing how space voids and navigable starpaths have changed over the millennia. For example, this map here —”

  He pressed someth
ing on his e-tab and a hologram showing a collection of stars appeared floating in the air off to one side. Jamie was instantly mesmerized — it showed thousands of stars spinning in a complex dance of light and dark.

  “This shows the entrance to the Solris Void,” Bram juggled something on the e-tab and this time the view zoomed to a dark space between a cluster of stars. “It’s newly discovered.”

  The name sounded familiar to Jamie. “Solris?” he queried. “Sounds like Latin for sun.”

  Bram’s eyebrows quirked. “Indeed?”

  “Yes — it’s Latin. Sol is an old human word for sun.”

  Bram tipped his head to one side, studying the hologram. “It’s the void that exited in your solar system, but the name is probably a coincidence.”

  “Yeah, only so many combinations of words in the universe, right?” Jamie grinned at him.

  The Naferi didn’t look impressed. He shrugged indifferently. “Possibly, Alekyn-sarai, but only a xenolinguist could answer that.”

  Sigh. Talk about being literal minded. Obviously he was interrupting Bram, but who cared? He was going to find out as much as he could, no matter how annoying that made him. Particularly about this void that opened near Earth — that might be a way home for him. He had to play it safe with his next few questions; the last thing he wanted was to alert any of the pard to his plan to find a way home.

  “So astro-history involves analyzing space void and starpath trajectories and navigation over a fixed span of time?,” he queried, casually leaning back on the couch, his eyes fixed on the kaleidoscopic loop of whirling and spiraling miniature stars floating next to Bram’s seated form.

  Bram did a double-take. “You understood what I said?”

  “Don’t sound so surprised. I may be from a not-very-advanced species, but there’s nothing wrong with my brain.”

  Bram’s jaw dropped, then he looked chagrined. “I apologize. I did not mean to imply that, Alekyn-sarai.”

  Jamie snorted. “Perish the thought. You didn’t even think about it, right?” he didn’t wait for an answer. “And stop calling me Alekyn-sarai — I have a name. Jamie Munroe. Use it.”

  For a moment, Bram stared at him. Then he nodded. “It seems strange to address you so, but, yes, Jamie Munroe, I will call you by your name.”

  “Jamie.”

  Bram looked at him askance.

  “Just call me Jamie, not Jamie Munroe. The first name is my given name and the second is my surname. You can call me by my given name; you don’t have to use both.”

  “Are you sure?”

  God, what was it with these people? “Yeah, I’m sure. I’m fucking your brother so it’s stupid to insist on formality, don’t you think?”

  Bram paled. “I…er…yes?” he said uncertainly.

  “Yes,” Jamie responded firmly. Then on a whim, he asked, “So can you show me more starcharts?”

  Bram looked as if he was going to say no. Jamie looked up at him, all big eyes and fluttering eyelashes. “Please? I’m so bored and the starcharts are so pretty to look at,” he murmured winsomely.

  To his amazement, Bram fell for it.

  “All right, Alekyn-sar…Jamie. I will show you how to use an e-tab and then you can look at more of the pretty starcharts.”

  Score!

  “I’d love that,” Jamie smiled at him disingenuously, hoping Bram hadn’t seen the flash of triumph he’d immediately felt at the Naferi’s words. “Are you sure though?”

  Bram sighed. “I said so, Jamie. Although,” he added a trifle testily. “It is taking me away from my studies.”

  What a shame. Not.

  “Well, if you show me how to use the e-tab, I’ll sit here nice and quiet while you do your work. I’m sure Alekyn won’t mind — he’ll just be happy I’m happy.”

  That seemed to clinch the deal. Bram immediately brightened. “Indeed. As long as you’re quiet like a good sarai, I can get on with my research.”

  Jamie gritted his teeth. This sex-slave malarkey was getting old fast.

  “I promise you,” he said, radiating a sincerity he hoped wasn’t obviously false. “I’ll be as good as gold.”

  Bram looked confused again. “Gold? It is a metal. It cannot be good. To be good, it must be sentient and that is not possible for a non-sentient thing, Jamie.”

  “Huh, no,” Jamie shook his head. “It’s just a saying. It means that gold is real, not counterfeit. It’s a simile …”

  Incomprehension etched its scanty trail on Bram’s face. Oh hell. Jamie tried again. “I mean I’ll behave properly.”

  Bram harrumphed. “I suppose it will be all right. As long as you sit there quietly and behave as good as gold, that will be fine.”

  Sucks to be you, thought Jamie, and smiled sweetly at the Naferi, who unexpectedly blushed.

  An hour later, Jamie was curled up on the couch, flicking the e-tab and casually commenting on the holograms that popped up. Bram occasionally off-handedly responded to his comments, seemingly without realizing he was being pumped for information — or at least, that the information he was giving Jamie could be used for anything other than momentarily alleviating the boredom of someone he evidently thought had the attention span of a fractious toddler.

  Starchart after starchart appeared, floating in the space in front of him. Beautiful, but nothing of any use to him. He was just about to ask Bram to find him something else to look at — possibly a primer to help him read Naferi, he grumbled to himself — when something remarkable happened.

  At first he didn’t realize what it was. He just flicked his fingers automatically across the screen, staring at the pretty patterns as they formed in the air. Then his brain caught up with his hands, and he reversed the movement.

  There it was. He stared at it, amazed, hope rising in his heart and mind, forgetting to breathe. Then he forced himself to calm down, and sucked in a deep breath, feeling air teasing his nostrils and spuming down his trachea, filling his lungs and making his heart resume its pumping.

  It wasn’t possible, was it? He couldn’t possibly be seeing what he thought he was seeing. He looked more closely, and then squeaked, quite audibly.

  It was.

  He tried not to shout his excitement aloud. It bloody was.

  Among all the hundreds of star systems — all the unlikely combinations of billions of stars — there was one he recognized.

  He looked at the e-tab screen and hissed softly, frustrated. Of course he couldn’t read anything, no handy keyword or url — he wouldn’t even be able to find this screen again if he logged out.

  “What is it, Alekyn-sarai?”

  “Jamie,” he corrected automatically, his eyes still locked on the constellation. “I know this constellation.”

  He traced the pattern in the air with a shaking finger. “It’s Cygnis — look, there’s Deneb, the tail of the Swan, and Albireo, the Swan’s head.”

  Bram didn’t seem all that impressed. “I do not see this swan you speak of, Jamie, but the names are interesting.”

  Jamie dropped his hand and turned around to face him. The names? He frowned, his excitement momentarily forgotten. “What do you mean?”

  The Naferi studied the hologram, this time more interested. “The star you call Deneb is called Denet in the language of the Foretimer, while the other — Albireo — is known as Albinea — ”

  “Close enough to be the same thing,” Jamie shook his head. “This isn’t a coincidence.”

  Bram shrugged. “Probably not. Again, a xenolinguist could help you with that, but it really means very little.”

  Jamie stared at him. “Why not? This constellation appears in the night sky at home, except…except it’s reversed, but it’s the same thing, with almost the same names. It’s like a gigantic signpost.”

  “For whom?” Bram snorted with amusement. “We already know where we are, and where your planet is.”

  Jamie’s shoulders slumped. Yeah, they knew exactly where Earth was, and how to get to it.

 
; The trouble was he didn’t, and without understanding how to read their language, he didn’t stand a chance of finding his way back home, not unless Alekyn kept his promise.

  It was depressing. He felt tears filling his eyes and caught himself in amazement. Was he about to cry again? Jesus, what was happening to him? Maybe Alekyn was right — maybe it was hormones. Maybe his body was changing …

  He shook himself mentally. Nah, he wasn’t drinking that particular Kool Aid. The Naferi might well be more scientifically advanced than humans in lots of ways, but they couldn’t change his gender like that. Biology was what biology was, and the male pregnancy trope didn’t apply to humankind, no matter what the Naferi believed.

  “I still think it’s very interesting,” he said defensively. “The similarity of the names suggests those whatchamacallits…those Foretimer knew Earth, or at least visited it and left some of their language behind, or maybe vice versa.”

  Another snort. He glared at Bram. “Laugh all you want. I bet one of your xenolinguists would find it fascinating. I know those on Earth — linguists, I mean, I don’t think we have xenolinguists.”

  “Yes, you do,” Bram supplied almost casually. “We’ve been analyzing the contents of your species” planet-wide compnet and it has some references to extraterrestrial languages. Although,” he added smiling, “Xenolinguistics was described as a hypothetical subject since no-one on your planet has ever spoken with an extraterrestrial.”

  “Yeah, well, I bet that’s changed in the last few days.”

  Chapter Six

  WHEN ALEKYN CAME HOME later that afternoon, Jamie was still in the study, staring through the window, his expression bleak. An e-tab lay discarded on the couch next to him.

  “Hello, sweetheart. Did you rest today?”

  Jamie frowned and glared at him narrowly. That was another thing. Alekyn insisted on treating him as if he was some kind of fragile flower. It irritated the stuffing out of him.

  “I didn’t need to rest.” He snapped, “I’m nineteen, not two.”

  Alekyn raised his hands as if deflecting a blow. “I meant nothing unkind, sarai.”