The Idea of Zechia

AFTER LOVE
SHARON FEINSTEIN

 

When we make love, I expand to take up the universe. For time out of time, I'm him, I'm me, I'm everything. I am beyond my body, beyond the room, yet so here, so into the moment it could be an hour, a minute, a year, there is no concept of anything but being.

 

I don't know exactly how Daktoy did it, no, how they did it, for I'm sure all ZerShaz have this power, this ability to kind of merge souls.

 

No woman could be with a ZeSha and go back to the diminished connection of a human man.

 

Each time we make love I want to prolong the rapture forever, want to understand what is happening, but just before I reach that completion, there's this slap of darkness and then, I'm just me.

 

When Daktoy comes he dies. His heart won't beat, he won't breathe; he'll lie there, getting colder and paler, and just when I figure he's dead for true, he'll take a breath and start coming back.

 

I sit over him now, stroking his thick black hair, so shiny and straight. With his eyes closed he only seems a little 'wrong' for the proportion of head to body is that of a child. I can see him as child, but he's  over six feet six inches tall and very muscular. 

 

I wonder, being five feet and hundred pounds, how I manage to make love to him. For when I see my hand against his face I am aware of how small I am; yet when I'm not conscious of my body ,we are equal.

 

It is part of the magic I guess, for we are not equal.

 

According to human measure; considering they thought he was ten years old when they captured him, he is thirty eight. But he wasn't ten years old when he was captured, he was under six, for no male child over six lives with his mother. He has been alive thirty three years.

 

But he's ZerShaziemn, not human, and ages differently. He entered sexual maturity only about five years ago. I'm human, it was twenty five years ago for me.

 

I look at his body, it's so beautiful, yet, strange, for he's hairless. Just one perfectly smooth body save for the scar running across his upper waist.

 

wiShelfa used some nasty gooky something that looked like tripe in superglue. I look away from it, back to his face.

 

His eyes are very large and since they're closed he can still seem a little human. But when he opens them and I see the sun flower pupil in the golden iris there's no question that he's not.

 

They say we are different species, which can't be right. Different species can't do this. And I wouldn't be pregnant if we were.

 

The species argument was political, a way to excuse atrocities and that for the past two hundred years there's been no attempt at truth to keep the war bubbling.

 

The war is over now.  Will the different species controversy end?

 

He lies on his back, the tension in his unlived in face gone, so he does seem almost a child. I watch him lie there, waiting, and he takes a breath and starts to come back.

 

His skin starts to deepen and when he wakes he will have this reborn glow and I would to bask in it, but if I stay beside him he is liable to say something he picked off my soul. For when we make love he becomes me, and me is not anyone I'd want to be.

 

When he wakes I have to be there, but I have split quickly, because something I've captured from his soul, I need to explore.  If I didn't split, I'd stay, and he might say something, or ask a question, and right now, I don't want to hide or lie, or even ask his permission or tell him what I intend.

 

As he returns from small death (as they call it), I kiss him, then race into the sani to shower. I have to think of something to get me out of the room before he, who has been as deeply into my soul as I have been in his, asks a question.

 

I scrub myself quickly as he joins me in the shower stall and I tell him I have to check my newer ini pilots and pop out as if I'm late for something I just imagined.

 

As I enter the main room the lights flicker. It reminds me of Real Time when electricity was provided by the Jamaica Public Service, as reliable as catching lightening in a jar.

 

The flickering of the lumis which ringed the walls meant someone was at the door.  I finished dressing, went to what looked like a wall, touched a bump at eye level. The wall dissolved and there stood the Deputy Dubai, who bows and politely asks if it's a convenient time to test my newer ini pilots.

 

In Zee world, whether space ship or planet, it's the same. Here's a wall, looks solid, it isn't. If you get 'behind' it at certain places, you can see into the room. You don't have to guess how they all know everything. They spy.

 

They spy and are supposed to spy. When a ZeSha reaches oRain rank, which is like Lieutenant, there's always supposed to be an Aide watching him.

 

This is a society built for war where security is paramount. Once you hit rank you don't go to the toilet that someone isn't hiding behind one of the make-believe walls watching, ready to obey any command you might make.

 

That means, of course, someone has watched us do it, just in case when Daktoy died I tried to kill him.

 

Pretending it was lovely, I called to Daktoy that the Srya needed me and was out of the room into the corridor.

 

The Fortress is twenty one stories high. There are no stairs but ramps and a pole in the centre for a speedy exit, but mostly one goes down the ramps.

 

As I'm important I get to ride down in a car, going around and around until I was dizzy. It's not cause I'm pregnant, any human person has to get dizzy circling wide empty identical brownish greyish clay walls with big doors on either end twenty times.

 

When we finally reached the plaza I got out of the car and decide to walk to the hanger to get the world flat.

 

It was a cloudy day as most days are on KeyTash and the temperature was like 80o, a bit cool for me. I was wearing the high leather boots, tight up knickers, the leather vest with a long sleeved turtleneck polo I had the ini build for me, and the elbow length gloves with no fingers.

 

I liked the uniform sometimes, though mostly I rather be in jeans and a tee shirt. I had a stock pile of jeans and tee shirts the ini had made for me and was thinking of increasing their repertoire.

 

It's not that I want to dis Zee clothes, but the choices are limited. All soldiers were the same uniform as I had on. All males were soldiers. Females hadn't been soldiers until I showed up. The usual costume for an ini was a long skirt over a pair of pantaloons, a kind of camisole-long bra-back brace under a sleeveless blouse and long vest with a big scarf.

 

I really like jeans and tee shirts better.

 

As I was entering the hanger I see oRain eLynka, one of iKhyarm's posse coming out. He approached, made the proper signs of respect, then told me none of the iSaz of the human planets will take any more humans.

 

This means the people of Xenos would be sort of stranded here on KeyTash.

 

I'm responsible for dragging over 80,000 people from a planet light years from here, losing more than half and making the rest homeless.

 

Good intentions never go unpunished.

 

I know wiShelfa, the Dubai, isn't happy having humans in her domain. I imagine she'll soon pop over to chat to Daktoy about how the human women are fucking down the place.

 

I have to get the people off Keytash before they get killed.

 

Zees are chaste and absolutely faithful. There's no adultery, there is no flirting, there is virginity then marriage.

 

Humans of the Twenty Fifth Century consider virginity a disease that requires constant treatment. I don't know how my 'species' moved into this omnisexual mode but this is the wrong planet for it.

 

I really thought I'd be able to transport the Xenos people to Earth. I didn't expect Earth to fire some kind of weapon which ionised the atmosphere so nothing could go in or out.

 

KeyTash was just an emergency landing. I expected the iSaz of Shalimar or Beta Mar to accept the Xenians. After all, what's thirty thousand more humans on planets of a few million humans?

 

It doesn't make sense to me why the iSaz are refusing and I ponder it as I enter the closet and undress, packing my clothes in a bag. Naked, I step to the measurement chamber and my body is coated with the organism which eats my wastes while an inside suit is being made.

 

Humans use the same method, save their inside suits are almost decent, as thick as a pair of tights, where Zee suits are virtually transparent and as thick as cheap stockings.

 

I pull on the Inside suit, careful not to tear it, then put on my Outside suit.

 

As it's made of fractured rocks it has to put on carefully. I step into the bottom half, snake up the upper half, putting my hands into the gloves which have been slipped into the sleeve mouths.

 

The Outside suit weighs about twenty pounds, I think. I walk to my veheTalya. There are fourteen females in suits like mine waiting.

 

I nod to them, they put on their helmets and find their flyers. Mine is the closest to the hanger. I get in and wait about five minutes, then taxi away, and as soon as I get the clear, take it up.

 

I had an idea, but didn't want to expose it, yet.

 

There's a point once I get far enough away from the planet when it sort of feels like I'm operating my motorcycle. It had that 'all you' kind of power, only so much better.

 

No traffic, no rain to get caught in, no potholes to fall in, no trucks belching smoke. And no cows.
Of course there were dangers, but I had a computer to sort of warn me and as space is, well, empty, I could just enjoy the ride.

 

To never do this again--don't think so.

 

I was checking sort of sideways that I could

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 10.11.2021
ISBN: 978-3-7487-9907-8

Alle Rechte vorbehalten