Sarai

by Jarli Grey

  “It seems you both misunderstand each other. Major, you informed me in our earlier communication that you and Jamie have mated. Have you set a date for the bonding ceremony?”

  Alekyn shook his head. “My pard and I have only a short furlough, and our parents must travel from Vamiet — so far we’ve not been able to organize anything. Plus …” he looked uncomfortable, “I have been asked to wait until the…situation with Jamie’s people has been clarified.”

  Jamie stared at him, eyes wide and suspicious. “Situation? What situation, and why does it need clarifying? Didn’t you tell me that PanGal is going to stop the Zill invading Earth?”

  The two Naferi looked at each other. Alekyn shrugged his broad shoulders. “It seems your people don’t like the conditions attached to being a PanGal protectorate.”

  “Let me guess — could it be I was right about humans not wanting to lose their independence to a bunch of aliens or to supply sarai?”

  Alekyn shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “PanGal ambassadors are still negotiating with your United Nations. They will come around once they understand what’s at stake.”

  Did the Naferi really believe that? They probably did, thought Jamie, staring at him glumly. “Do my people know you took me?”

  Silence. Jamie’s eyes narrowed. “Do they?”

  “Yes,” Alekyn gritted.

  Thank god! Jamie wanted to scream his joy aloud. “Then I can go home!”

  “No!” Alekyn half-rose in his chair. “You cannot, Jamie, you will not! It’s not possible.”

  Jamie couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Why the hell not? I know you think you need me, but, honestly, man, you don’t — you’ll get over it. “

  “No!” Alekyn was visibly trying controlling himself. “No,” he said more calmly. “You cannot, Jamie. It’s not possible. I won’t let you go.”

  He was shaking his head slowly. Jamie stared at him and then at Tiff. Was it his imagination or did the healer look troubled?

  “There’s something going on, isn’t there?”

  “Jamie, it’s too late.”

  Color drained from Jamie’s face. “Why?” he asked hoarsely. “Why is it too late? What aren’t you telling me? Why won’t you take me home, dammit?”

  “Jamie,” Tiff said softly. “Alekyn, your Sarat, brought you to see me because he thinks you are already with kit.”

  Jamie shook his head slowly. That old chestnut! He was so over hearing it.

  Tiff cleared his throat. “Jamie, have you felt…different lately?”

  He stared at the healer blankly. Was he in on the farce as well as Alekyn and his pard?

  “Have you felt…unwell?” the healer insisted. “Nauseated? Headachy, perhaps a bit on edge? Just not yourself?”

  He had to be joking.

  “Of course, I don’t feel myself,” he snapped, “I’m billions of light years away from my world, which is about to be invaded by planet-destroying aliens. My home was destroyed and I’ve been taken as a…sex toy by an alien with cat ears who won’t take me home.”

  The two Naferi stared at him, confusion written on their faces.

  “Jamie, just answer the healer’s question and stop the insults,” Alekyn’s voice was stern.

  “Go to hell,” he replied, folding his arms in front of his chest defensively. “There’s nothing wrong with me at all. Nothing! I just want to go home.”

  “Well, that’s not happening,” Alekyn retorted. “Jamie, I will not let you go — I told you, you are my all, you are everything to me. You will settle down.”

  “No, I won’t settle down. I agree, we have good — no, great — physical chemistry. If you were human, I’d never let you go — we’d marry and adopt kids or get a surrogate for them since you seem to want them so badly and, I dunno, have a great life, but this is all wrong for me. You have to understand that.”

  The flurry of words faded away. Alekyn stared at him, then shook his head. “No, sarai.”

  Jamie jumped to his feet, his hands clenched. “This is not right. I won’t stay here. I won’t. I demand to be returned to my home.”

  “You have no rights!” Alekyn was on his feet too, shouting. “You belong to me — ”

  “No, I don’t! What was it you said, healer, about some ceremony?” Jamie snapped his fingers. “Bonding ceremony — we haven’t had a bonding ceremony. If that’s like a marriage, were not married and I’m not staying!”

  They were both breathing heavily. Jamie jumped slightly when Healer Tiff’s voice cut in.

  “Major, Jamie is the first human we’ve come across. It is obvious his unhappiness is growing and eventually his mental health will undermine his physical wellbeing.”

  “He shouldn’t be so stubborn, then.”

  Jamie winced at the coldness in Alekyn’s tone.

  It seemed to bother Tiff, too. He tilted his head to one side, studying them carefully. “It is, I think, not quite as simple as you think, Major Alekyn. We need to improve Jamie’s outlook and minimize his unhappiness —

  “Let me go home,” Jamie interrupted, “then I’ll be happier. Alekyn can come visit me.”

  Alekyn’s low growling filled the room. “Not happening, sarai,” he snarled.

  “Major,” Tiff raised a warning hand, ‘stand down. Jamie, what do you do for recreation?”

  The sudden change in topic momentarily derailed both of them.

  “I sit outside in the garden and stare at bloody flowers,” Jamie sniffed angrily, ‘sometimes I sit in the study and stare at the picture books Alekyn here thinks appropriate for me to look at. As if I were a kid. Occasionally Alekyn bends me over his desk and sticks his cock in me.”

  Alekyn hissed. “You said you liked that!”

  “I do!” Jamie shot back. “It’s good, better’n any sex I’ve ever had, but it’s not as important as having a life, my life.” He put his face in hands, muttering indistinctly. “I just want to go home. I need to go home.”

  To his horror, tears began rolling down his face. Again, tears, and this time he hadn’t even made himself cry. Shit, what was happening to him?

  Alekyn made a small sound, a sort of mewling sound, and gathered him into his arms, holding him tightly. “My sarai, please, please accept our lives together.”

  By this time Jamie was truly weeping, ashamed and aghast at his weakness. “I just want to die…I can’t live like this anymore.”

  Chapter Seven

  HE LOOKED UP TO SEE the two Naferi staring at him. Alekyn looked horrified and distraught at his words, but Tiff’s serious demeanor was assessing rather than condemning. He blinked as Tiff checked his compnet. After a small pause, the healer looked up at them.

  “I think, major, that your sarai — that Jamie needs activities and exercise to counter his longing for his home. Have you introduced him to anyone other than your pardmates?”

  “No, healer. We were advised that would not be appropriate, given the interest that many people have expressed in Jamie.”

  Jamie’s brow wrinkled. “What interest?”

  “Jamie, you know this. I’ve told you many Naferi are interested in your species. Many Keinyn and Elusians and Halatians also. Some of them are desperate to find out more about you and maybe take you for their own.”

  “Rubbish! That just so much bullshit, man. You’re just saying that to excuse treating me like a prisoner.”

  “It is not rubbish or shit that belongs to bulls, whatever bulls are,” Alekyn snapped back. “Healer, now do you see my problem?”

  “That’s right,” Jamie sniped back, “try to make the nice doctor think I’m mentally unstable. Jerk.”

  This time the silence was ominous. Tiff raised his hands, trying to deflect another round of fighting.

  “Gentlemen, please stop. This is getting us nowhere. Major, Jamie’s welfare is important. That includes his mental as well as his physical wellbeing.”

  Alekyn stared at him mutinously, which Tiff ignored. “Because of that,” he continued,
“I am prescribing leisure and education activities outside your den for Jamie. He needs to interact with other people, including other sarai.”

  Jamie’s jaw dropped. This was exactly what he’d secretly hoped. “I can’t read Naferi,” he said cautiously, hoping his desperation wasn’t obvious. “I’d like to learn — that would help me.”

  Help me to get home, he added mentally.

  They both stared at him.

  “What? Is it so odd I’d want to learn?” he asked defensively. “I was only a couple of weeks away from going to university, to study medicine, and now I’m locked away, looking at kids” picture books and being told I’m going to be popping out furry babies.”

  Alekyn groaned. “I’ve never said our babies would be furry. Healer, please!”

  Tiff ignored him, leaning forward towards Jamie, his eyes bright with curiosity. “Medicine — you want to be a healer, Jamie?”

  Jamie nodded. “Ever since I was a kid. My mother died of cancer —”

  To his surprise, Tiff’s face softened. “Ah, yes. That used to kill people here too.”

  Jamie gaped at him disbelievingly. “You have a cure for it?”

  “Yes, cancer, like many other illnesses, was eliminated generations ago. That probably is something the Naferi and other members of PanGal could help humans with — if they accept our help with other matters, of course.”

  “And if the Zill don’t destroy them first,” muttered Alekyn, his gaze fixed on Jamie.

  Jamie didn’t know what to say. They had a cure for cancer, he thought numbly, and probably for a whole range of things that daily killed thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of people on his planet.

  Imagine the misery and suffering that could be overcome if humans were able to learn from the Naferi.

  He couldn’t begin to imagine it. It was humbling. So engrossed was he in his thoughts that he almost missed Tiff’s next words.

  He was suggesting that Jamie continue his studies.

  “But I can’t read Naferi,” he gasped. Tiff looked at him calmly and then his next words hit Jamie with the force of a lightning bolt.

  “That will not present many difficulties. Major, I will adjust Jamie’s neural implant while he is here today.”

  Jamie’s jaw dropped. “What did you say?”

  Tiff’s brow wrinkled. “I will adjust your implant so you can read Naferi.”

  “Seriously? It’s that easy?”

  Tiff nodded. Jamie swung around to face Alekyn, his face contorted with rage.

  “You knew, didn’t you, that it would be as easy that? That all they’d need to do was adjust the implant — and you let me be bored out of my mind. Why?”

  Alekyn said nothing, face impassive.

  “Well?” Jamie snarled. “All these weeks I’ve been looking at picture books, getting people to read things for me, and all that needed to be done was some minor adjustment to the damn communication device you had planted in my head — you bastard, it was just another way to control me, wasn’t it?”

  Overwhelmed, his voice choked into silence. Alekyn’s ears twitched.

  Jamie stared at him, lips tight and narrow. For some reason, Alekyn’s perfidy over not allowing him to read was really hurtful, a complete betrayal of what Alekyn had begun to mean to him. Probably, he realised with sudden, painful clarity, because it was all about control, all about getting Jamie to accept the unacceptable.

  “Sarai …” Alekyn had evidently registered how deep his anger was. “I meant nothing more than to give you time to settle — ”

  “Settle?” Jamie’s laugh was bitter and thin. “You arsehole, that’s never going to happen. You didn’t want me to be able to read Naferi because you wanted me to always depend on you for everything, to make me into some sort of pathetic fucktoy slave, isolated and lost and powerless.”

  He turned back to Tiff. “If you don’t need his permission,” He glared contemptuously at Alekyn, “then adjust my neural implant so I can read. If I have to be a slave, at least I’ll be a well read one.”

  Tiff studied them both, his expression neutral, and then nodded. “It is the right of all sentient beings to learn in order to fulfil themselves. You are not a slave, Jamie, although I see now that some of our cultural differences may lead you to think like that.”

  “Yeah, well, what you say and what he does,” Jamie flicked a dismissive glance at Alekyn, “are two different things. On earth some humans will say and do anything to get what they want, no matter how dishonorable. Looks like the same thing applies to noble Naferi battle thanes.”

  His contempt stung, he saw. Alekyn’s face reddened, his ears, lying flat back against his skull. Suddenly Jamie was more than fed up; he was completely over it.

  “Hell, just adjust the damn thing and then my master can take me back to my prison.”

  Tiff nodded and tapped something on his e-tab. “The adjustment will require mild sedation, then nothing more other than rest for the remainder of the day.”

  ____________________________________

  SAY WHAT YOU LIKE, JAMIE DECIDED, sitting back in his chair some days later, the written word was the best way to absorb information. To be able to read was bliss. Even the Naferi version of television, which seemed to consist of scientific programs and battle pics — no romances for the Naferi — seemed more comprehensible once informed by what he was able to read.

  He didn’t like to think about the languages now imparted directly into his brain — frankly, the science behind it seemed more like witchcraft than anything else, although when he said so Bram informed him in a matter of fact way that the witches he knew of were more likely to decant his brain out his ears rather than actually put something useful into it.

  Jamie gaped at him. “Witches? You mean magic exists?”

  Bram nodded, scribbling a notation on his e-tab with a pencil-like implement. “Of course. At least, it does on Endoris. Not many people go there because the Endorians tend to magic them out of existence. After they’ve eaten their brains, naturally.”

  “Naturally,” Jamie echoed. “And nobody wants their brain eaten, right?”

  “No, it is not something generally recommended. Endoris is considered a very dangerous place. We tend not to go there.”

  “Probably an excellent idea.”

  He shook his head and absent-mindedly scratched his arm, glancing down at the red mark he’d raised. He frowned. That particular spot on his arm had been a bit sore since his neural implant was adjusted. Tiff had given him a sedative and he’d dozed while they did the brain-thing to him. He remembered his eyes closing and the room fading around him as he told Tiff he didn’t want Alekyn anywhere near him. He’d heard a small, sad mewing sound as unconsciousness overtook him, then he’d woken back in his room alone.

  The past few days had been awkward to say the least. He and Alekyn were not speaking. There didn’t seem to be much need because he had nothing to say that Alekyn would listen to. He was Alekyn’s sarai, his slave, nothing more, and their developing relationship had withered away. Now whenever he entered a room and Alekyn was there, he left, spinning quietly on his heel and sliding away. He knew it was childish, but he just couldn’t bear being anywhere near the big Naferi. He didn’t know where Alekyn was sleeping, but as long as it wasn’t with him, he didn’t care.

  He knew the pardmates were concerned by the state of affairs between him and Alekyn, but, well, hell, who cared? Not him, that was for sure.

  One small victory was his, though. Alekyn had taken some of Tiff’s advice to heart, and Tig, Eled and Bram were taking it in turns to escort Jamie outside their den into the city. He’d been taken out and about, seeing shops and galleries — it turned out that the Naferi adored art, but it was heavily stylized and seemed overly formal.

  Jamie wondered what they’d think of paintings by some of the great and conflicted human artists — all emotion and expression, color and vibrancy. He brooded darkly for a moment. The Naferi would probably think those confused,
wonderful artists just needed a caring Sarat to protect them from themselves.

  To his surprise, Alekyn also agreed to allow Jamie to begin studying. Apparently his desire to study medicine had prompted Healer Tiff to investigate tutoring options for Jamie. Every second day, Bram or Eled or Tig took Jamie to a small school near the main library in Altas where curious Naferi and Halatian teachers vied to help him attain qualifications that would enable him to enter the Naferi equivalent of university. Jamie had to admit, those two or three hours of intensive training were amazing and the educational techniques used were enabling him to absorb practical knowledge at an incredible rate.

  He was learning all sorts of things, including a few things not on his study course. Avionics, for instance, or at least interstellar navigation …

  The only fly in the ointment, so to speak, was that even his shortest trip outside the den attracted attention. It was disturbing and a bit freaky to attract so much attention. The Naferi and the Halatians he met at the school were bad enough, but on the street people stopped and stared if he forgot to keep his cloak and hood on. It just felt so weird, a bit like the goldfish bowl attention that human celebrities and members of royal families had to live with.

  He said as much now to one of his teachers, a Naferi who, like all the Naferi he’d met, looked way too young to be teaching anything, let alone advanced medical bioengineering.

  “You represent hope for us, Jamie,” Asfer informed him with a smile. “Our birthrates are declining. Not just ours, but the Halatians, the Elusians and the Keinyn — all the Foretimer races are hoping that Earthans —

  “Humans,” Jamie reminded him, and Asfer nodded.

  “Humans will be able to help us restore our populations.”

  “But there are billions of you,” Jamie said. “Surely you don’t need to worry about birthrates.”

  Asfer looked at him oddly. “Jamie, there are billions of us, but there are also billions of worlds and other species, some of which are like the Zill and want to destroy us simply because we live. The multiverse is full of predators. Without adding to our populations, we will become the victims of time and opportunity. Your people can help us survive.”