Just a few feet beyond my bed ran a small, clear brook, gaily tripping over stones as it flowed from a waist-high waterfall just beside me. The whole place smelled lush and full of life. I had never seen a cave this beautiful.
I violently shook my head to clear it. Who cared how beautiful it was; where was I? And where was the stranger? Had he brought me here?
As if in response to my silent question, a section of the wall suddenly quivered, and gave way. I leaped back with a yelp, but the wall quickly rebuilt itself behind the figure who stepped into my cavern. Although he wore a linen-like shawl that covered all of his face but his eyes, I recognized the intense gaze immediately.
The stranger.
My first thought was that he was dressed like an adventurer- tall, supple leather boots that hugged his well-shaped calves, brown trousers with holsters strapped to both of his hips, and a form-fitting white linen shirt that seemed to grow more transparent the longer I looked at it.
His sculpted, bare arms and hands were covered with grime; without so much as a glance at me, he casually walked up to the brook and, kneeling down, began to splash water onto himself, slowly cleaning away the layering of dirt.
As soil gave way to skin, I saw that he seemed to emit a faint glow, as if a small bit of fire ran just beneath the surface, mixing with his blood. Perhaps that’s why his arms were so warm, I thought, and then quickly shoved the memory away.
“Where am I?” I made my best attempt to keep my voice steady, but even to me, it sounded pathetic and weak. I cleared my throat, and tried again, “Tell me where I am, right now!”
He stood up, nonchalantly drying his hands on his pants. His silence made me want to scream, but I swallowed down my frustration. I had to be brave, and clever, for there was no doubt I was in the gravest danger.
“If you’re not going to kill me, then please, at least tell me where I am.”
“Kill you?” the stranger repeated, unconcernedly, “If I was going to kill you, I would have already done so.”
“That isn’t as comforting as you think,” I crossed my arms, “So, then, will you please tell me where I am?”
The stranger reached up, and pulled the linen shawl from his head. He was just as unnervingly attractive as he’d been; even more so, now that ample light allowed me to see all of his features fully.
His linen shirt was undone just enough that I could make out the indentation at the base of his throat, and the line of his collarbone tapering off into broad, well-muscled shoulders…
I quickly jerked myself back into focus. “Uh-what did you say?”
“I asked, what is your name,” he replied with a small smile that was a little too knowing.
“Oh, is this going to be a game? You’ll only answer my questions if I answer yours?”
“No. I won’t answer any questions I don’t want to.”
I snorted derisively, “Buddy, who do you think you are?”
He fixed me with the full force of his captivating eyes. “You may refer to me as Commander Zenon,” he answered in his melodic voice. He bowed courteously, “And I am the captain of this vessel.”
“We’re on a ship?” I asked, looking around me in awe.
“We are, currently docked at a refueling station on Dionus I conquered about an hour ago.”
I threw him a suspicious glare, “Conquered an hour ago? What are you trying to pull here? And I’ve never heard of anything called Dionus.”
“You wouldn’t have, would you,” he replied with callous contempt, “But I am getting ahead of myself. I believe the courteous thing among humans is to return an introduction.”
I chewed on my bottom lip for a moment, considering, but finally answered, “I’m Morgan; Morgan Uaine. That man you killed in the woods was my boss. His name was Trent, and he was an innocent man.”
“I know perfectly well who he was,” Commander Zenon said, his voice no longer quite as polite as before. He abruptly turned away, and with a sweeping gesture of his arm, turned an entire section of the wall transparent, as if it was some kind of holographic window. Beyond, for as far as I could see, there was nothing but endless, rolling hills of sand.
“This,” he indicated the sea of dunes, “is Dionus, my home world.”
“World?” I repeated in a daze.
“And you, Morgan Uaine, are my captive.”
“Captive?” my voice rose in panic.
He turned back to face me. His expression was completely calm, untroubled by my distress; the arrogant prick was ruthless. My panic quickly morphed to anger. I wanted nothing more than to throw something at his perfect face.
“It is… unfortunate, that you involved yourself in affairs that didn’t concern you,” he continued, “I have much unfinished business on Earth, and I could not afford to leave you as an eye witness to my… enterprises.”
“You can’t keep me prisoner,” I growled. He snorted, as if in amusement, “You’ll find that I can, at the very least until my business on your pathetic little planet is concluded.” He paused, and then added, “I am not without mercy. I swear to you, on my honor, that your every need will be attended to. You will find no other finer vessel on my world than this one.”
“A magnificent prison,” I sneered.
He considered me for a moment, as if I was some mildly interesting experimental art exhibit, then shook his head. “Humans. You stubbornly cling to any and all emotion, even when it flies in the face of logic, and yet barely transcend anything but the superficial.”
“Some pretty intense moral judgment coming from a murderer,” I shot back, “I always thought if there was other intelligent life out there in the universe, they would have disowned violence, but apparently, you can’t even transcend the most primitive of urges... ”
“Enough!” Commander Zenon snapped. His anger seemed to surprise us both, but it disappeared as soon as it appeared, his face quickly morphing back into the smooth countenance of control. Clearing his throat, he said, polite and distant, “You will, of course, not be permitted to leave your room. If you desire anything, simply speak it out loud, and my servants will assist you.”
Glancing at me, he suddenly grinned. If he had been beautiful before, it was nothing to the startling brilliance of such a happy expression on his face. It took me a moment to recall how to breathe.
“You-may also want to consider a change of clothes.”
“A change-?” I glanced down at myself. In all of the intensity of finding myself a captive aboard an alien ship, I hadn’t paid the slightest attention to what I was wearing. I was wearing, it turned out, hardly anything at all-just my tank top, and a pair of hip-hugging panties.
“Gah!” I cried, quickly trying to cover myself with the blankets from my bed, “What-why didn’t you say something?”
The alien commander flashed me a smile that made me suddenly glad I wasn’t standing, a smile that seemed to promise something far darker than common politeness. “And ruin the fun of you not noticing?”
Without another word, he strode from the room, the wall crumbling before him, and materializing at his back, leaving me once again alone in the magnificent cavern that was now my home.
* * *
I tried everything I could think of to open the mysterious door in the stone wall. I searched every inch, running my fingers along the stone, poking, pulling crystals, until I was sure I had the thing practically memorized. Still, I couldn’t find any button or latch or secret knob that seemed to control the door.
My next theory was that the door was controlled by motion; perhaps, like the hologram window, some special movement was required. Fifteen minutes of waving my arms around, and foolishly hoping the alien commander wasn’t watching, resulted in yet another dead end.
Temporarily demoralized, but determined, I finally decided that a change of clothes probably would do me some good. As soon as I thought about it, another opening appeared in the wall, right beside the raised platform.<
br />
Peering cautiously into it, I found myself in another, smaller cavern. In the very center was a small, deep pool, steam rising from its smooth surface. Closer examination found that the cavern included a sink and toilet, carved straight from the rocky wall.
Even more miraculously, sitting just beside the pool, was my duffle, the one I was certain I’d lost in the mad dash through the woods. The duffel contained nothing but bikinis, beach wear, and a few books, but just a few small reminders of home lifted my spirits considerably.
Hoping once again that the alien commander didn’t make a habit of spying on his captives, I undressed and slipped into the pond. The water was the perfect temperature, not hot enough to make me uncomfortable, but warm enough that I could already feel the tension leaving my muscles.
I dutifully washed my hair and face, and then found a small ledge that I could sit on. As I let the warmth seep into my bones, I began to formulate a plan.
I clearly wasn’t going to escape on knowledge alone. If this wasn’t all some kind of elaborate prank, I was on an alien planet. I was going to need to find a way to not only get out of my cavern prison, but discover a way back to Earth. I’d need to uncover as much information as I could about my captor and his world, and how I could use it to my advantage.
I’d have to make him think I wasn’t a threat. If he thought me harmless, if he trusted me, then I could leverage that.
But he seemed to hate humans. How in the world could I overcome that? The memory of the way his mouth had curled whenever he addressed me swam in my mind. Even when his face was twisted in loathing, he was still shockingly attractive, like a classic painting of an angry thunder god. And the way he smiled…
I hastily marshalled my thoughts. Focus, I reprimanded myself. Maybe there was something in the air on this planet; I had never been this easily distracted by good-looking men before. In fact, by and large, I didn’t pay them much attention at all. To be fair, though, I’d never met anyone quite as attractive as the mysterious Commander Zenon…
Your captor, I quickly reminded myself, The alien who murdered your boss. However handsome he might be on the surface, I couldn’t allow myself to be fooled by appearances.
When I finally emerged from my bath, gently toweling off my hair and now more suitably dressed in a pair of shorts and a camisole, I found another surprise. In my absence, someone had placed an elegant wood table right beside the hologram window.
The tabletop was overflowing with breakfast food-toast; different jars of jams, pancakes stacked ten high, bacon, eggs, waffles, and even a whole bowl of fresh oranges.
There wasn’t a soul around, and I hadn’t heard a single noise while relaxing in the pool. Despite myself, I couldn’t deny that the alien tech supplying all this abundance seemed almost magical.
Trying not to feel self-conscious, I sat down in the chair, helped myself to a glass of cold milk, and contemplated the endless sea of sand just outside my prison cell. I was going to escape… but perhaps it wasn’t the worst thing if I took my time doing it.
Days slowly passed in generally the same fashion. Something about the planet seemed to screw with my watch’s timekeeping ability, so I forced to guess at how long I had been captive simply by the movement of the overly large sun hanging over the vessel.
This planet, Dionus, seemed to have a similar planetary rotation, with day slowly slipping into night. The nights here were far brighter, due to the two large moons hanging low within the sky at every dusk.
Breakfast would be waiting for me, hot and fresh, as soon as I was done with my morning’s bath. Lunch and dinner were the same; I could never catch the servant who brought in the food, even if I sat vigilant on my bed waiting for them. They seemed to wait until I glanced away for even a second, and deliver my meals right under my nose.
In between meals, I did everything I could to get to know my prison. The more I examined it, the more impossible the whole escape mission seemed. There didn’t seem to be a single latch or knob or even crack indicating a door to the outside in the whole place. Maybe it didn’t matter if the alien commander killed me; if I didn’t make any progress soon, I was sure I’d go mad from boredom.
To my astonishment, on the third day, a pile of books accompanied the arrival of lunch. I paged through them with awe-all in English, and all with the heady smell of old pages. There were books of every type… philosophy, classical literature, puzzles and riddle books, textbooks, and even a few modern sci-fi novels.
I treated the gift with caution at first, wondering what in the world the alien commander’s motivation could be, for there was no doubt he had purposefully instructed someone to leave these books for me.
Maybe he’d gotten sick of watching me go over every inch of my cell, trying to figure out how the magical door in the wall worked? Maybe he was trying to trick me-to see if I’d select something that might aid in my escape.
Perhaps he cared that you were entertained, some small voice suggested. I finally abandoned my suspicion and threw myself into reading, pleased to be doing something a little productive.
It wasn’t until the seventh day of my captivity that I finally saw another being. I was taking my morning bath, lost in thought over the theory of light traveling in space that I’d discovered in one of the physics textbooks the night before, when a voice suddenly startled me out of my repose.
“Mistress?”
“Gah!” I leaped off my ledge, nearly submerging myself completely in the pond. I hurriedly turned towards the sound of the voice and saw, to my amazement, a silver figure standing at the entrance to the larger cavern.
“Who-are you?” I asked unsteadily. Although I was standing in neck-deep water, I covered myself with my arms, just in case.
The silver figure gave a small bow. Instead of feet, it balanced on one large wheel. It had a slim rectangular body, from which four arms spouted. A long, narrow head with two glowing spheres for eyes sat atop a thin spindle of a neck. It reminded me strongly of the robot housekeeper from the Jetsons, though it didn’t seem to be wearing an apron.
“Greetings, Mistress. I am Alva-b-900. I have been assigned to your quarters,” its voice was polite and sophisticated, as if its programming had been based off butlers in old English films.
“Oh-um… hello,” I nodded uncertainly.
“I have breakfast ready at your convenience. Today, I have prepared the juice of oranges as well, as we have noted you quite prefer that fruit. I hope that so far my Earth pancakes and pork remains have been satisfactory?”
I hid a small smile, “Do you mean bacon?”
“Yes! Bacon. Thank you mistress,” the robot butler chimed happily.
“Well… thank you. Your, hm, ‘pork remains’ have been quite delicious. I’ll be right in,” I reached for my beach towel.
“I also come bearing a message from my Commander,” the robot added. I froze-had he spent the robot to spy on me? Did he already suspect I was planning something?
“My Commander requests that you join him for dinner.”
“He-wants me to join him?”
“Yes. He also requests that you not wear-” the robot switched into a perfect imitation of the alien commander’s voice-” ‘those inferior Earth garments’, and instead select something from the wardrobe he has provided.”
Anger flared inside me. It wasn’t enough that he took away my freedom, but now he was attempting to dictate a dress code? I did my best to control the disdain in my voice, “We’ll see. For now, I’m going to keep wearing my inferior Earth garments, if it’s all the same to him.”
“Yes, Mistress,” the robot replied cheerfully, "I will be awaiting you outside. Please let me know if I can be of any assistance.” With another bow, the robot cycled from the room.
I slowly pulled myself from the pool, my mind racing. I hadn’t seen nor heard anything from him since the morning he informed me that I was his prisoner. And now, all of a sudden, he was inviting me to dinner. W
hat did it mean?
However, as I dressed, I realized that whatever his motivations, they didn’t matter. This was my chance. I was finally going to see him; I could finally have a chance to hopefully uncover a little bit of what made him tick, to convince him that I could be trusted enough to occasionally leave my cell. Maybe I could even persuade him to give me a tour of the ship. The opportunity was almost too good to be true.
I sat down to breakfast feeling happier than I had in days. I was finally going to get somewhere. And, I forced myself to admit as I helped myself to some bacon, maybe seeing him wouldn’t be all bad either.
* * *
I stood ready and waiting in my cavern cell as the large red sun began to set behind the sand dunes. I was wearing the best I could manage-my nicest camisole in soft red, and my nicest pair of jean shorts. I’d spent more time than usual on my hair, so that it fell gently in waves around my shoulders. I wasn’t a Greek goddess, but I was presentable.
The wall slid open without warning, revealing a gleaming silver hallway. After the naturalistic environment of my room, the outside looked mechanic, sterile, alien-which I supposed was appropriate.
Alva-b-900 stood patiently waiting for me just beyond the wall opening, all four of its hands folded together. With a bow, it indicated the hallway beyond. “This way, please,” it said, and rolled off.
I took a deep breath, and followed the robot.
The droid led me through long, plated hallways that seemed to stretch on forever. There were no windows, no doors, no way to differentiate one turn from another. I did my best to keep a map in my head, but after two dozen turns I knew I’d never be able to keep it all straight. The commander’s ship was just too big.
At last the droid paused beside an in descript blank stretch of hallway. I stopped as well, and shot the Alva a puzzled look.
“You must wish to enter the room,” the droid provided helpfully, “Only then will the doors obey you.”
“Whatever happened to ‘open sesame?” I muttered, staring at the wall. Just like my room, there was no knob, no crevice, no indication that there was any kind of opening. Was the door… telepathic? Was that how Commander Zenon controlled his ship?
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