Rogue

by Cheryl Brooks

  “Well, no,” I admitted, “but I thought you’d want to be sure…” My voice trailed off as I looked up at him. He certainly was imposing! Asking Wazak questions while sitting opposite him in an open vehicle was one thing, standing toe-to-toe with him was quite another. No one in their right mind would have followed him into the palace carrying so much as a pen knife.

  Wazak didn’t reply, but if he’d had eyebrows, one of them would surely have risen before he turned and started off down the hall again. I hoped the natives weren’t all as unfriendly as he was, though I thought if I spent more time with him, he might warm up a little. It was possible he was trying to intimidate me on purpose, just to make sure I didn’t cause any trouble in the future. Imagine that! Me, a troublemaker!

  “Will the Princess be having dinner with us, as well?” I asked, trotting to catch up with him. “I—I’d like to meet her.”

  “Perhaps,” was Wazak’s noncommittal response.

  I closed my lips firmly. Oh, just shut up and follow him, Kyra! Keep quiet and stay out of trouble! Which shouldn’t have been difficult for me, since I’d never been in any kind of trouble in my life. My record was clean—no felonies, no misdemeanors, no minor infractions of the rules. I’d never even gotten a parking ticket.

  I tried to focus on where we were going and where I had been. After the open portico, we were now passing through a maze of corridors, which all looked alike. This was probably another way of keeping the slaves safely inside, because even if they did get loose, they’d never be able to find their way out. Maybe there was a code in the carvings on the walls. Hell, there could have been numbers and signs plastered all over them, and I wouldn’t have known what they meant! If I was ever left on my own, getting lost was a certainty.

  “Should have listened to my mother,” I muttered to myself. I wished I had Nindala with me for moral support. We would have been whispering behind Wazak’s back, making fun of his tail or something, which would have eased the tension.

  I tried to imagine what Nindala would have to say about Wazak and nearly bit my lip trying not to laugh out loud. I could almost her musing, “Do you think his penis is as ugly as his face?” I couldn’t have said at that point, for, despite his lack of so much as a loincloth to cover the area where one might normally expect to find a penis, there didn’t appear to be one. I decided that Darconians were probably one of those species that kept their tool drawn up inside until it was needed, but without Nindala around, I doubted I would ever find out. After all, I was lucky ever to have seen a human penis; what chance did I have of finding one on a lizard? Aside from that, I didn’t want anyone to get any strange ideas, because I was pretty well convinced that having sex with someone like Wazak would be fatal to a Terran.

  I was watching his tail sway back and forth, so I noticed when Wazak’s swagger became more pronounced. Looking ahead, I saw that we were approaching a large set of carved doors, which were flanked by two guards who looked a lot like Wazak but had a different style of breastplate—more ornate than his and more polished, as though they’d never seen actual combat. Queen’s guards, I decided. This was it.

  The guards stiffened slightly, but Wazak waved them aside and pulled the doors open himself. I had a new thought: if there was a queen and a princess, shouldn’t there also be a king? I couldn’t remember anyone ever mentioning one, and while the room I entered contained two Darconians, one much smaller than the other, neither of them were nearly as large as Wazak, which led me to believe that I was now facing the Queen and her daughter.

  Smaller than Wazak and not quite as ugly—though she wouldn’t have won a beauty contest on any planet except, perhaps, her own—Queen Scalia had enough jeweled necklaces draped around her that she wouldn’t have required clothing, even if she’d been human. She could have had mammary glands hidden under there somewhere, but, as an egg layer, she wouldn’t nurse her young anyway. It was quite possible that I had the only tits on the whole damn planet.

  Since I couldn’t even swear Wazak had a cock, maybe the overt differences between the sexes had to do with color, because they were different: Wazak was an iridescent green with yellow highlights, while the Queen and her daughter were both a shimmering mixture of green and purple. I remembered seeing a few on the street who had a bluish tint, though, and decided that this characteristic corresponded to hair color in humans and had nothing to do with gender.

  The room wasn’t particularly large, but the table at which the Queen and the Princess sat was quite beautiful, made of that same marble-like shepra stone and polished to a high sheen. There were windows at the far end looking out on a grove of trees and the farms beyond. It was relatively cool there, and though the room wasn’t lit with any conventional light that I’d ever seen, there was some kind of glowing stone set into the ceiling. It must have been in the corridors, too, for I hadn’t seen any torches, yet the windowless hallways had been well lit.

  “Welcome to Darconia, Kyra Aramis,” she said. Her accent wasn’t as thick as Wazak’s, and she spoke the Standard Tongue quite clearly. “I am Queen Scalia, and this is my daughter, the Princess Zealon, your student.”

  “I’m very pleased to meet you,” I said. I wasn’t sure if I should have added a “Your Majesty” or a “Your Highness” to that or not. No doubt I would be informed. I smiled and bowed slightly toward the Queen and then to Princess Zealon, who, though she had coloring similar to her mother’s, wore much less jewelry. “Will you join us for dinner?” the Queen asked.

  I was starving, but the table was empty. No doubt the food was still squirming in the kitchen. “Yes—” I broke off there, not knowing quite how to address her and blurted out: “Um, what should I call you?” before I could stop to phrase it more delicately.

  Zealon giggled, but Scalia was a bit more tactful. She stared at me for a moment. “I have given you my name,” she said. “Have you forgotten it already?”

  “Well, no, I haven’t, but, on Earth, queens are usually called something else when you’re actually speaking to them.”

  “How odd,” she remarked with a questioning glance at Zealon. “Such as?”

  “Your Highness or Your Majesty for queens,” I began. “Your Grace for a duchess, My Lady for lesser nobles. Of course, there haven’t been any queens for some time now, and I only know that much from reading books. We don’t have kings anymore, either,” I added, hoping that last statement would prompt her to tell me about her own king, and it did.

  “We do not often have male rulers here,” Scalia said. “Their tempers are too volatile.” She gazed past me, looking at Wazak for a long moment. “We queens have only consorts.”

  “No king, then?”

  “Only if a queen does not produce a female child,” she said with a nod toward Zealon, “and it is rare that they do not.” She paused for a moment, possibly considering my original question. “You may call me Queen, Queen Scalia, or Scalia,” she said with a casual wave. “It matters not. Which name do you prefer?”

  “I—I’m not sure I…”

  Zealon giggled again, and Scalia silenced her with a wave of her hand.

  “Your name,” Scalia said. “Kyra, Aramis, or Kyra Aramis?”

  “Oh, you mean me,” I said, feeling very stupid. “Kyra.”

  She nodded, first at me and then toward Wazak in what must have been a dismissal, for he left us, closing the door behind him. Motioning for me to take a seat at the table, she said, “We will have food then, Kyra.”

  Someone must have been listening on the other side of the door just behind her, because it swung open immediately, and some odd-looking aliens came in with laden trays—mostly fruit, thank God! I wondered if these were some of her “exotic slaves.” One was squat and toadlike, but instead of hopping, it had legs that bent oddly at the knee, making it waddle a bit. The other was tall and spindly with long fingers that appeared to have suction cups at the tips, like an octopus. With
round, bulbous eyes and a fishlike mouth, he was pretty ugly, but if his fingers were any indication, he must have been an outstanding waiter—I doubted he ever dropped much of anything. I also noted that, like the Darconians, neither of them wore any clothing. Having set down the trays, the taller one asked Scalia if she needed anything else.

  She denied needing anything further, but looked at me, smiling slightly—at least, I thought it was a smile—and asked, “And you?”

  “A really big glass of water,” I gasped.

  Princess Zealon laughed out loud. “You see, Mother,” she said gleefully, “I told you so!”

  “Yes, you did,” Scalia said with a nod.

  Mystified, my gaze darted back and forth between the two of them. “What?”

  “My daughter has been studying humans since we decided to look for a teacher on Earth,” Scalia explained. “She said that water would be the first thing you would ask for, and she was quite correct.”

  “I’m glad I could live up to your expectations,” I said graciously. “So, tell me, Princess, what else have you learned about humans?”

  Zealon sat up a bit straighter, as though preparing to recite a poem. “You are mammals, not egg layers, so you have hair, rather than scales, your skin burns in the sun, so you wear clothes, and you are omnivorous, but if you eat meat, you cook it first.”

  “Well, that just about sums it up,” I said, silently thanking God that at least someone had done her homework, and I would never be offered wriggling worms for dinner! “Very good, Princess. Later on, I’ll have to ask you some questions about your planet, because when I did my research, I wasn’t able to find out very much.”

  Scalia smiled—I was sure this time, though in all honesty, it looked more like a grimace—as she patted her daughter on the head. “Zealon will be able to answer all of your questions, for she is quite intelligent. She will make an excellent queen one day.”

  I was glad I had Zealon to talk with, because I had always felt so much more at ease with children. They generally don’t bother to hide their feelings; if they like you, you’ll know it, just as you will know if they don’t. It is so much more difficult with adults, who are often deceptive, no matter where they come from.

  “We’re getting a McDonald’s next year,” Zealon said ingenuously. “Then we’ll be just like every other planet in the quadrant!”

  “Ah, yes, progress,” Scalia said with a sigh. “Zealon has encouraged me to seek a franchise, though I’m not quite sure what manner of food they will serve here. I understand that they sell meat sandwiches made from cow flesh,” she said with obvious distaste. “We do not have cows.”

  “Oh, I think any kind of meat will do,” I said. “And it doesn’t have to be meat, either; what they serve usually depends on the local cuisine. You can make hamburgers out of just about anything if you try hard enough.”

  Scalia nodded. “We are striving to become a more open, cultural society. This, along with the influx of other life forms, has been my wish for some time now, though there are those who oppose it.”

  “And that’s why I’m here, then?”

  “Yes,” the Queen replied. “It is my wish to improve the music education of our young, beginning with my own daughter as an example.”

  “So,” I said, turning to Zealon, “what do you think of all of this?”

  “I want to learn to play well,” she said firmly. “I will do my best.”

  “I can’t ask for more than that.” Having the desire to excel was half the battle when it came to training young musicians. I wondered how well she’d be able to read music, which put me in mind of something else. “Do you all speak Stantongue? I know many worlds have adopted it as their official language, but have you?”

  “Oh, yes,” Scalia assured me. “For many years now. It is one of the best ways to encourage trade.”

  “Well, that and having something to sell,” I conceded.

  “Our stones are sought after by many,” said Scalia, “but we have only just begun to market them to other worlds.”

  This made me wonder if she had traded some of the rarer ones for her exotic slaves. If she was interested in progress, she was probably going to have to abandon her rather barbaric hobby in favor of something more universally acceptable, like collecting coins.

  I tasted some of the fruits and found them to be quite edible. Everything was either in its natural state or sun-dried; if anything had been cooked, you couldn’t tell it, and the water, as well as the food, was served at room temperature. No one had cut up the fruits and vegetables, either, so if you wanted to eat something peeled or chopped, you had to do it yourself. I watched Scalia and Zealon carefully, noting which ones they peeled before eating and tried to follow their example, but I would have given a lot for a little salad dressing—along with some ice. Apparently “cuisine” of any kind would have been lost on them—even something as simple as a fruit salad. Of course, the food required no energy to prepare, which, on a world that seemed to have very little in the way of combustible fuel lying about, would be a definite plus. The new McDonald’s should prove to be interesting.

  They did, however, serve what Scalia told me was a locally produced wine, which I found to be delightfully sweet and fruity, but deceptively potent.

  After dinner, Scalia sent Zealon off to bed, telling her that she needed to rest well before embarking on her new career as a concert pianist. I seconded that and was then left alone with the Queen, who wasted no time in introducing a new topic for discussion—one which she probably considered unfit for young ears, just as the wine was for young palates.

  “Tell me about your human males,” she said, as the little toad-slave poured out more of the wine. “I understand that they are very… desirable.”

  “You’re asking the wrong person,” I said candidly. “I’m single, remember?”

  She nodded. “Yes, I knew that, but tell me, are they less volatile than our males?”

  “I doubt it,” I replied. “They get into trouble all the time. Of course, women do, too, so I can’t really say that men are the root of all evil.” I took a sip of the wine—it would have been impolite not to—but I’d have to watch how much I drank of it, or I might find myself out of a job.

  “Is it true that there is a sexual reason for everything they do?”

  I almost laughed aloud, because Nindala had asked me a similar question. “Not necessarily,” I replied, trying to seem impartial. “I doubt if human males are that much different from any others—no more than the women are, anyway—but I haven’t traveled much before this, and I came straight here, not stopping along the way. I probably should have,” I added, “but I was anxious to arrive.”

  “As I was to have you here,” she said graciously. “But you are tired, I am sure.”

  “A little,” I admitted. “It’s been a long trip, and I’d like to get some sleep. I’m sure I’ll have a busy day tomorrow.”

  “I will not keep you much longer.” She paused, calling out to a servant in the next room before taking another delicate sip of her wine and continuing, “But before you go, you must see my cats.”

  “Your cats?”

  Nodding, she said, “I’d like your opinion of them.”

  That sounded odd. What did it matter what I thought of her pets? The little toad creature was told to fetch the cats, so I had a little time to think. Okay, if this was a desert planet with intelligent life forms that looked for all the world like dinosaurs, what kind of cats would they have here? Saber-toothed tigers?

  On that thought, the door opened again, and the two cats entered—but they weren’t cats, at least, not in the ordinary sense. They were tall male humanoids—undoubtedly more of Scalia’s “exotic slaves”—and they certainly were exotic! Separately, each one would have been stunning, but together, they took my breath away—would have taken anyone’s breath away, even Nindala’s. F
or myself, I was just glad I happened to be sitting down when I saw them for the first time. Staring back at them in awe, I had barely managed to take another breath when one of them turned his startlingly blue eyes on me and, no doubt noting my open-mouthed expression, lowered his eyelids ever so slightly and sent a roguish smile in my direction.

  And I had an orgasm.

  Scalia probably thought I’d choked on my wine, but that wasn’t it at all! I felt a fire begin to burn deep inside me when I first laid eyes on him, and his smile sent me over the edge. I’d never felt anything quite like it before in my life—nor had I ever seen anything to compare with him.

  “They are my most prized possessions,” Scalia said. “Very beautiful, are they not?”

  I’m not entirely sure what I said in reply, but it was affirmative, though undoubtedly inarticulate.

  Scalia smiled. “I hoped you would like them.”

  I took another sip of my wine—actually, it was more of a gulp than a sip—and asked, “W—where did you find them?”

  “The slave traders in this region know of my penchant for interesting specimens and brought them to me,” she replied. “You would not believe what I had to pay for them! The trader said that there had been a bounty placed on them, which, of course, meant that I was required to pay about twenty times that amount in order to get them—and also to keep him quiet as to their whereabouts! Apparently, someone holds a grudge against their kind and set out to exterminate them entirely—which would have been most unfortunate, as I am certain you will agree.”

  I think I nodded, but sitting there trying to imagine a whole planet full of these guys nearly made my uterus go into another spasm. I decided that a group of jealous men must have gotten an army together and plotted against them, for certainly no female in the known universe would have gone along with such a scheme. I mean, Scalia was a lizard, and even she liked them!

  “But they are safe here,” she added firmly. “They are kept under lock and key at night, and no one beyond the palace walls knows they exist. And, unlike my other slaves, even my daughter has never seen them.”