The Gigolo's Bride (The Necklace Chronicles) (6 page)

After breakfast, Eden showed her how to work
the vid, and they watched a movie about his planet. Once more,
instead of sitting next to her on the couch, he sat on the
ottoman.

The vid was like a documentary, although it
was utterly self-serving, which was probably the point. Like the
one she'd seen in the room with the other women, it was made from
the standpoint of explaining the Norlan world to newcomers. It
showed only the best parts of the land, citing their military's
ability to keep their shores and skies safe, their scientific and
engineering brilliance at space travel, and the incredible beauty
of the land.

"We'll live there." He gestured to a large
map that popped up on the screen. "Where it says Polona. It’s a
small town outside of the capital of Kyvern City."

She folded her arms in annoyance. "My home is
back on Earth. I have a nice little apartment that I'd like to get
back to."

He ignored her snarky comment and said,
"There is a museum within walking distance and a really nice park.
There's not a lot of property, but enough for a small garden, if
you like to do that?"

She sighed. He was so enthusiastic and sweet
it was hard to be dismissive, especially when he looked like a
wounded puppy. "I never had any place to grow anything. But I might
like it, if I had the time."

His brown eyes glittered happily when he
looked at her, and he went back to explaining the wonders of the
street that he called home while she groused internally at being
unable to keep him at arm's length. She wondered how the other
women were faring.

When the vid was over, he said, "What did you
like to do on your planet?"

"I worked as a daycare teacher."

"What is 'daycare'?"

"It's a place where parents can take their
children during the day. Usually, if the parents work, they will
take them to daycare and other adults will watch them, along with
other children their age, and they'll learn and play."

He nodded, and she said, "Do you have daycare
on your planet?" Although she still wanted to go home, she couldn't
help but wonder...if she was stuck on Norlan, what would she
do?

Shaking his head, he said, "No. One parent is
home with the children at all times, until they are old enough to
go to school."

She found herself frowning. She'd wanted to
get married and have babies and stay home with them, the way her
mother had with her. But she'd planned to do that
on Earth
.
She was a little bit relieved to know that it was something that
the two planets had in common, that one of the parents was a
caregiver while the other one worked.

"What do you do, Eden?" she asked, aware he
hadn't really told her much about himself. He'd talked at length
about the planet, but had revealed little personally.

He froze for a moment, and she wondered if
she'd said something to upset him. When she was going to ask him if
something was wrong, he said suddenly, "I saved money before this
trip so that we could spend time together once we were back
on-planet. When the time comes, I'll find work." He spoke
animatedly, but she felt like it was a false happiness. Before she
could ask him to elaborate, he said, "Tell me what you did when you
were not at the daycare with others' children."

He seemed genuinely interested in her, and
she found herself warming to him. She told him about her monthly
book club, and the historical romance novel she'd just started for
the group; her twice-monthly trips to local dance clubs with some
of the women she worked with; and her obsession with a TV series
about vampires.

"Vampires are not real, though? I read
something about them when I was studying your people."

"No, not real," she laughed. It felt good to
laugh. And to share.

"They sound like the
ligaru
, a
mythological race of flesh-eaters. They have sharp teeth and hide
in the shadows. Parents use them to frighten their children into
being obedient."

She wrinkled her nose. "That sounds like the
bogeyman from my planet. The vampires I like looked and acted
human, but drank blood instead of eating food. They're a myth,
though, too. When I was seven, an older neighbor boy told me that
the bogeyman liked to hide in closets and under beds. That night, I
was so terrified of my open closet door and the darkness inside
that I screamed myself hoarse and scared my mom and dad to pieces.
I slept with a light on after that. For a long time."

Eden's eyes narrowed, and a particularly
feral look crossed his face. "I would string up that young boy for
terrifying you, if I could."

Her face flushed and she dropped her eyes.
She'd never had a man want to avenge her honor before. Peeking up
at him through the veil of her lashes, she was sure that he would
go after Tommy Perkins if he could.

That evening, he cooked dinner for her and
she watched. In the small kitchen area was a cooker, a refrigerator
that he called a ‘refrigerated cabinet’ and an oval- shaped sink.
The stove and sink, like the bathtub and lights, worked by voice
control. The refrigerated cabinet was square and contained shelves
stocked neatly with containers of food and drink.

He laid out two saffron-yellow pieces of flat
bread and arranged strips of pink meat he had fried on the cooker
on one side of the bread. He had asked her to slice a pale green
vegetable that was shaped like a carrot, and he added those thin
slices to the meat. Dabbing a white cream on top, he rolled the
flat-bread up like a wrap sandwich and placed them on plates. A
scoop of crispy noodles with light brown gravy sat to the side of
the sandwich.

"Oh, this is really good, Eden!" she
exclaimed after taking a bite of the sandwich. The meat was crisp
and salty, the vegetable was crunchy and mildly sweet, and the
cream was tangy.

"Thank you." He blushed. "It's my favorite.
Esot
with
guiu
and
freks
."

She had to laugh. "I have no idea what any of
that stuff is, but it tastes good."

After dinner, they watched a vid that was a
popular evening show and a lot like a nighttime soap opera. It was
about a wealthy family and the fictional town that they lived in.
Despite her best intentions, Ashleigh found herself enjoying not
only Eden's company, but the things about his planet and his life
that he was showing her.

The nightmare came back for him again that
second night, and she felt even worse for him then she had the
night before. Already she was starting to care about this alien far
too much, but she just didn't know how to stop herself. It was only
going to be the two of them together for three months. How was she
supposed to stop from feeling anything for him after so much time?
It was a battle she was already losing, and she was both frustrated
and disappointed with herself.

She complained about being bored on the third
day, after a breakfast of sugar-dusted pancakes with fresh fruit.
It was as close as he had been able to come to donuts. One of the
fruits, which he called a
ronii
, was sweet like ripe
peaches, and she greedily ate every piece he had. The large,
strawberry-shaped fruit was sweet and seedless, and its mauve skin
was edible.

"You could visit my sister Sloan. She's a
medical officer on board."

"You have a sister? I thought your people
stopped having baby girls?"

"There are some born from time to time. Sloan
was one of the last ones before our people realized that the
females were sterile."

"Is she married?"

He shook his head as he cleared the table.
"The men won't choose a female from our people because they are
unable to have children."

"That's cruel, to the women."

He shrugged, but his eyes said he agreed.
"Without babies, our people will die off. We have done what we
needed to do so that our people will survive."

"Seems like they could have come up with
something besides kidnapping."

"They did try. Sloan, and many of our top
scientists, are working on the problem." After a quiet moment, he
said, "I'll call Sloan and ask her to come get you. I, uh, have
some things I'd like to get done, so she can escort you back and
forth."

"Sure, Eden."

Within an hour, Eden's sister Sloan was
walking with Ashleigh on the way to her chambers. She was tall and
curvy, with dark brown hair and eyes, and a pretty, welcoming
smile. She seemed so happy to meet her brother's bride that
Ashleigh found her attitude infectious. "I'll take you to see my
office another time. It's pretty busy there right now; there was a
fight that broke out amongst some of the single males."

"Why were they fighting?"

"Why do any men fight?"

Ashleigh smiled. "Because they're
stupid?"

Sloan laughed and entered her room, motioning
her inside. "Perhaps. Men appear to be the same no matter what
planet they hail from. Sit, please. I'll get us something to drink
and you can tell me all about yourself."

Her room was soft and feminine, and about the
same size as Eden's. The flooring was sandy brown and the walls
were pale green. Ashleigh sat on a small couch and kicked off her
slippers.

Sloan brought her a glass of
flar
,
which was a mild liquor that tasted like white wine. She set a tray
containing small crackers, cheese slices, and fresh fruit on a
small table in front of the couch. She sat next to Ashleigh,
listening to her share about her life back on Earth. Ashleigh found
it was easy to talk to her, and she listened with rapt attention
and asked questions and joked. Sloan talked about her work as a
medical officer and her hope that someday she would be able to
reverse the barrenness of their females.

"What happens to your women, when they’re
barren?"

She smiled sadly. "We're useful, but not as
wives. Once it became widespread knowledge that the females were
barren and that cross-breeding with species from other planets and
systems might produce the hope of the future, many that were
married were tossed aside. I was engaged to marry a man named
Talek, and he said he wouldn't marry me unless I had a fertility
test done. Even though I had hope that he didn't mean it, when the
results came back that I was sterile, he walked away without
another glance. He was one of the first ones to take a bride from
another planet. He has a couple of children now, but all boys." She
smiled slightly. "I guess I can take some small measure of joyful
revenge in that."

"Eden said that some females of your planet
can still have children, while others are entirely barren."
Ashleigh tried to wrap her head around the situation.

"I'm one of the unfortunate females who are
truly sterile. I won't have children of either sex. The scientific
community is almost certain that something happened universally to
us; either an unknown change to our genes or environment with the
end result of either true sterility or only male children being
born. I'm almost thirty-five years, and there are less than five
hundred females younger than me, on a planet where the males
outnumber the females 8 to 1. The men, they want to help the race
survive, not make more competition for future generations by only
having males."

"But I thought that men's sperm determined
the sex of the baby?"

"It should. But what we discovered through
many years of testing was that something happened between
fertilization of the egg and implantation in the uterus that
changed the baby from female to male. We tried inseminating them
artificially, but no matter how we manipulated them, the fetuses
always became male. The only time we could get female babies was
through the use of alien eggs and uteruses. It's unfortunate, I
know, and I do feel badly for you and the other women. But our
people are desperate."

Ashleigh protested, "But the babies that will
be born, they won't be either race, but a mix."

"It doesn't matter; our people can continue
on."

"How long have your people been abducting
women from other planets?"

She rolled her eyes in thought. "I became an
adult at sixteen years and they started testing the females shortly
after that, and then it took many years for the probes to return
with the right planets for the ships to take women from. Ten years,
perhaps."

"And you haven't found a cure or the reason
for the sterility?"

"No."

"And how many babies have been born since the
abductions started? How many girls to boys?"

She smiled. "The first mixed baby girl was
born about five years ago. Now there are over a dozen girls and
about thirty boys resulting from the abductions. There have been
numerous pilgrimages to other planets and systems, but the travel
time is long and the women, of course, need time to adjust."

Of course.

"You don't know if the girls born now will be
sterile or not, though," she pointed out.

"That girls are born regularly is sign
enough. When the time comes that they are adults, they'll be
tested. All testing so far points to the mixed females being able
to breed successfully."

She felt her anger rise. "And in the
meantime, your people are abducting innocent women like me."

Sloan put down her glass and took Ashleigh’s
from her. "I know you're angry, and I can empathize with you, but
think of it this way. If your people were going to die out
eventually, wouldn't you do anything in the universe to change the
course of that future if you could?"

Ashleigh wanted to say that she thought she
would rather go gracefully into non-existence then abduct women and
force them to breed, but she didn't. Because if she knew anything
about human nature, then Eden and his people had behaved no
differently than humans would have.

Sloan shifted the subject slightly, "I hope
you can take some comfort in knowing that Eden will take very good
care of you. He cares about you.”