Theron's Hope (Brides of Theron)

by Pond, Rebecca Lorino

  “Grace, are you all right?” He reached out to touch her but thought twice. Maybe she would not want that. “What can I do, Grace. I don’t know what to do?”

  He asked her what was wrong and she did not answer. In a panic he asked her what he could do. Grace looked into his aqua eyes that were showing strong emotional confusion. That wasn’t right he was a doctor. Doctors almost always knew what to do. She surprised him and placed her head on his chest and wrapped her arms around him. It took him a few seconds to figure that maybe she wanted him to hold her. He slowly made his move to put his arms around her. It seemed he wanted to be sure this is what she wanted, just in case that was not what she had in mind for him to do. She moved closer to him as she tightened her grasp around his body and cried taking deep gasping breaths. He carefully hugged her in return and gently rubbed her back as she let out all her tears.

  “Grace, are you alright? Do you need something, anything? I can go back to the clinic and get you a sedative if you need one?”

  “No, I never did like sedatives. My mom gave me half of one of her valiums once when I went to my first cotillion. Let’s just say it was a disaster. Could you just hold me for a little while? I am feeling bit better with you here. I think the being alone and the sight of a special gift from my cousin Michael set me off. I am going to miss him and Em and the children so much.” She answered as another wave of sobs hit her hard.

  He rocked her gently in his arms as he would a baby. This seemed to do the trick. She was crying noticeably less and lay like putty in his arms.

  “I am sorry. I was trying to be so strong. It just all caught up to me somehow and I couldn’t stop it. It’s just really hard to adjust to the fact that I am never going home again.” She said looking up to him. “Will I be able to say goodbye to my family?”

  “Frankly, we had not thought of that. We did not think of many things. Your group was the first we took and we thought it would be easy. We never thought about how our actions would affect each of you personally. It actually feels a bit shameful on our part if you ask me. Maybe we could propose something to the council for the women of your race. Would you have any ideas on what would make this an easier transition for you?” Zane asked earnestly.

  “Zane, I am chock full of ideas and many more questions.” She answered trying to smile. He looked miserable and sad. Regret of his actions showing in his very readable face.

  With this revelation, Zane started to smile and then laughed when he heard her say questions. His mate was full of questions. It was something that he was starting to admire about her. She joined in his laughter. She sat up and said to him in realization, “I must look a mess. Let me go and freshen up and we can talk. Will you be leaving anymore today?” Her mascara was smeared under her eyes and she did look pretty bad with the uneven dark circles just under her lower eye lid.

  “I will be staying with you for the rest of the day, unless there is an emergency that my staff cannot handle. If you still want to, we can go and visit Brylon and maybe go down to the shops to get you a hair dryer. It is completely up to you.” Zane was glad she seemed to be happier.

  “Can we go out tomorrow? I would rather stay here and talk. Maybe ask some of my questions if you are game. Questions are just a part of my profession like being a doctor is yours. My Grandmamma would be so proud that I am with a doctor and that we are basically married. Maybe, she would finally approve of me.” She giggled at her own joke and made her way to the bathroom.

  Zane was puzzled at her last statement, but decided to make his way back to the kitchen. He was going to prepare a snack and make each of them another mug of tolka. It was bound to be a long day filled with insightful questions from his mate. He had a few of his own as well. She was better than he ever imagined and her personality was so complementary to his. Never in his life had he met a woman that he could talk to like this and he wanted to do it for hours.

  She came out of the bathroom with her face washed. The way her hair was gathered away from her face was beautiful. In her hands she held a black hard bound book and the sliver metal case she clutched to her chest as she was crying earlier this day. Her eyes were still red from all the tears but he could see that she was in better spirits and ready to begin her line of questioning.

  “Oh, you made me some tolka. Wonderful! What are those?” She pointed to the small appetizers placed neatly on the plate.

  “These are pizo gana. The pizo is an animal we get meat from. It is sliced thin and served in a gana, or a wrap. Would you like to try it?” Zane said offering her one of the pinwheel looking items.

  “Sure, why not?” She placed it in her mouth and started to chew it, tasting all the flavors. “It tastes like ham and what did you use on the wrap?”

  “I spread some of the Larta, the Ona butter, we had with breakfast. Do you like it?” Zane said exited that her facial expression showed that she liked it.

  “It is really good. Thanks! Now, can I ask you some questions?” She fired right back at him.

  “I was waiting for you to start. Will I be able to ask some of you as well?”

  “Of course, I am not a woman to deny a man answers,” she giggled then became serious. “How did you find and travel to my planet?” She was in reporter mode now. He saw her become serious as all the emotion was swept from her face like she applied some kind of mask. It was fascinating to see this transformation. What happened just minutes ago was gone and now replaced with a totally different state of mind. You would have never guessed that she had cried as much as she did earlier but for the small red capillaries visible in her eyes.

  “We encountered your planet after entering a worm hole that is located behind your moon. I will show it to you when we have the opportunity. We travel through worm holes, as I mentioned before, using a material called cavementon that enables the ship to travel through them intact. We gave some of this to your government as well as technical plans and instructions on its use in exchange for some of the females that reside on your planet.”

  “So, you travel through wormholes.” Gracie started to remember a story she did in Geneva covering the CERN attempt to prove the Higgs-Boson particle otherwise known as “The God Particle”. She ended up meeting a physicist who she dated for several weeks after. This guy was interested in how time and matter co-existed. His focus surrounded Einstein’s theory of relativity. He had a couple of experiments planned and was a wealth of knowledge relating to the story she was writing. Eventually she got bored with him and moved on but he was a great guy none the less and she had fun hanging out with him. “If you travel through worm holes, you would be traveling at or about the speed of light, right?”

  “Yes.” He was amazed at what she was knowledgeable about.

  “So, if we travel at or about the speed of light does this actually let us observe something the physicists on Earth call time dilation, in which time for those traveling at the speed of light experience a slowing of actual time relative to those who are not traveling at the speed of light?”

  “Wow, you have a great general knowledge about many things. Yes, we do see this. It is one of the theories I am working on with regard to our genetic makeup compared to yours. Our life span is longer than yours and right now my goal is to make that more equal. I have a theory that the speeds at which the ships travel and some of the foods in our diet will contribute to making your life span as long as ours.”

  “I dated a physicist for a little while when I was researching a story a while back. Anyway, if you experience this phenomenon, is it safe to say that when we travel to your planet in the X-tran galaxy, we will slow down the aging process while being on board the ship and if we were to travel back to Earth in the future, would it be safe to say that all of my relatives will be much older than I am or even possibly dead?”

  “Yes, that would likely be true. I am sorry Grace. I wish that if you wanted to return, we could allow you to, but we can’t. You are with us for life. Are you alright with being here, being here w
ith me?” He added the last bit to the question shyly almost embarrassed to have said it aloud.

  “It could be a lot worse you know.” She went to take a sip of her tolka looking over the edge the mug and he could see the lift of one of her eyes from the smile she was hiding behind it. “You could have been green and slimy and maybe a bit stinky to boot like some of the ailens they portray in our movies back home. As it is, you are tall and good looking with beautiful aqua eyes. You even have these gold flecks in them. I saw someone enter the holding room with Avery that had purple eyes with gold flecks. Are these colors typical with people of your race?”

  “Then, you saw Zeb, our commander. Yes, our eyes may look similar with regard to structure, shape, and relative size to the body but the colors are vastly different. You have beautiful eyes yourself. They are bright and green. I have never seen anything like them.”

  She started to blush and noticed that he was red in the face as well. She shook her head trying to regain her composure, quickly returning to her line of questioning, “You told me that your planet is at war with another civilization. How long have you been away, and what happens to us if your planet is rendered unsuitable for life before we return to it? Do you have any plans for us if that is the case?”

  “We have been on our current mission for several years. Your planet is the only one we have encountered that has life similar to ours. We know that our planet is fine at the moment and we have not received any credible threats from our enemies. We do have smaller craft that travel to us in the case of emergency and sometimes we receive visits from council members to assign or instruct us for ongoing missions. Several council members joined us several days ago when we reported the find of your planet. They are on board now.”

  “Wouldn’t you say that with regard to me and those of my fellow human females’ welfare, you should have a backup plan in place just in case all does not go well in the near future?”

  “Like I said before, we did not make any other plans. Maybe we should have but we didn’t. Do you have any suggestions? I do have a council meeting in a few days with Zeb, Brylon and those few council members I mentioned. If you come up with anything, I can speak with Zeb and see if you can present it to the council yourself.” He looked up at her awaiting her response.

  She looked at him with excitement she said, “That would be great. I think that the Earth women on this ship need an advocate. I would be happy to represent them. Do the council members speak English as well?” She asked in earnest.

  “No, but I am going to take you tomorrow to be fitted with translation chips that will enable you to understand any language you will encounter on this ship. Our ear drums are a bit larger than yours so I had to make them smaller. It will continue to learn and modify itself as we become more fluent in your language.”

  “How does it work?” She was curious.

  “Well, for starters, it is implanted in your ear drums. Right now any sound you hear is causing a synaptic response in your brain in the form of an electrical pulse that your brain associates with a word. This device interferes with the natural electrical pulse and mimics the same response for each word it hears, associating it with a word that you already know. Any word that doesn’t have an equivalent would be heard in the original language that is spoken. It is hooked up to the database of the ship and is updated constantly. You will see an improvement as we have a better understanding of your language.” Finally, he thought, an easy question. He had been working on these devices for a week and they were just about ready. They were just applying the finishing touches.

  “Would you be willing to brainstorm with me for a bit?” She said excitedly trying to come up with some key things that the women of Earth would need before they left and to prepare for the future in case something went disastrously wrong.

  They sat there for hours. She telling him of the things she would need to do before they left. All of them involved going back to the planet’s surface, a feat that he did not think that the council would approve of. He would run it by Zeb before hand to make sure that he would have his commander’s support. She had a large fortune that could be placed in trust for ‘the Brides of Theron and their Children’. She also had to dissolve her stake in several companies that would face undue hardship if she were to abruptly disappear. With her acceptance of her fate taken so well, it should not be a problem to convince his friends, but the council would be the only thing standing in their way.

  He went to the communications panel and called commander Zeb. Speaking in his own language, “Zeb, do you think you have some time to meet with Grace and I in our quarters? We would need to speak with you for about an hour but most likely less. Grace has some great ideas to protect the interests of the women of her planet. I hate to take time from you and your mate but would not ask if it was not extremely important.”

  “Sure, I can meet with you both. I just left Avery after doing something that I think will help her adjust. She is alright in our quarters now busying herself with her things. I will be there in a moment and I will explain when I get there.”

  He turned to Grace and presented her with a small box. She opened it and found a hearing aid like device. He took the box from her and removed the device from it. Holding it in his hand, “This is a temporary hearing device. It will allow you to understand Zeb. He already is implanted with a translation device so he can understand you but he has not had the time to learn your language enough to speak it. It might sound funny at first but you should get used to it.” He placed the bud into her ear and wrapped the rest behind the ear lobe. “With this device you will hear the translation in one ear and in the other will be our language.” He said something in his own language to show her. She nodded to him in acknowledgement. In one ear she heard, “Do you understand me?” in the other she heard the odd language of the Theron warrior’s. He was right it would take some getting used to.

  Chapter 9

  About five minutes later, Zeb knocked on the door. Zane let him in as Grace stood proudly behind him. “Have a seat. Zeb, this is Grace, my mate. I believe she befriended Avery in the holding room.” Turning to Grace he added,”Avery happens to be Zeb’s mate.”

  “Didn’t you call last night for a sedative?” She looked to Zeb with concern, “Is Avery alright?”

  “She is fine now. As I was telling Zane without including the details, I went to the Earth’s surface today and gathered some of the belongings she requested. Right now she is putting them away. She shocked me a bit when I was down there, asking for me to get a feline creature named Books.” He shook his head trying to erase the memory of the cat hissing at him and turned his gaze to Zane, “Brylon helped me gather her things. We tested some of his equipment. We might want to propose to the council that we need to extend this opportunity to all the females taken from Earth. It seems to have made Avery happier. So, what do you need my services for this evening?”

  Zane began explaining the plans that he was working on with Grace. “Grace was mentioning that the Earth females need an advocate to make sure that their rights are not violated any more than absolutely necessary. She also has a proposal for the council. She wants to ensure a monetary fund for the future of the Earth females and the children they produce with us. Grace has a sizable fortune by Earth’s standards and would like to arrange a trust for the women we abducted. I am going to let Grace fill you on the rest while I prepare us some food drinks.”

  Zeb looked to Grace anxiously awaiting her ideas. He realized as well that the females were taken without much thought for their feelings much less rights. He vowed with respect for his own mate that he would do all that was necessary to make it right for the women of Earth. They would not repeat this mistake if he had anything to do with it. He listened as she made her proposal.

  “Thanks for meeting with me Commander. Please convey my best wishes to Avery, I hope to see her really soon if we can arrange that in the near future.”

  Zeb nodded, “I am sure that Avery would
enjoy visiting with you. I will be sure to ask her when I return to her.”

  “Zane told you that I am considered extremely wealthy on my own planet. Not only did I receive a great amount of money when my parents died, I actively run several businesses as well as write as a profession. The biggest business I own is a law firm that was started by my late father. Right now, my cousin Michael runs it for me but I have final say in all major decisions affecting this business. It would be a terrible hardship for anyone of my companies if I were to just disappear. Here is what I am proposing.” As she spoke Zeb was listening attentively, while Zane started to place a pitcher of green liquid, three glasses, and some food down on the coffee table in front of them.

  “I am proposing to forgo all of my wealth and place it in trust to safeguard it for ‘The Brides and Children of Theron’. In return, you will have to let me go to the surface for at least a week to take care of my obligations to my businesses and family.”

  Zeb addressed Zane directly and said, “You do know why the council will try to block her from returning to the planet, don’t you?”