Star Chasers Read online

  “How long have you been here?”

  “I? Three thousand years.”

  “Then you’re immortal?”

  “No. In my other form, I could exist for four millennia, but I do not wish for longevity. To live forever alone is the worst existence. You know that, as I.” Sorrow shadowed his face.

  “You know a lot about me,” she challenged.

  “I watched you from the first day you arrived.”

  “You watched me?” Hair prickled on her nape.

  “From the window. You saw me as a pattern of light, a rainbow you called it. That is my reality before I undertook the Change.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Of course not. So much to explain. I would have come to you in dreams, prepared you, to avert the horror you feel now.” He spread his hands. “Your accident meant there was no time for the usual initiation. We choose our companions with care. Those who are alone, sad, sometimes dying. We restore them, give them life and hope. And love.” He smiled. “While you slept I intercepted your memories, of your lover, of your Xanadu, so that you would awaken in familiar surroundings. There is so much I do not understand, so much I wish to learn.”

  Suleah stepped back from him. “You crawled around my mind without permission, extracting memories, feeding your illusions to seduce me. It’s disgusting!”

  “No.”

  “Yes, I say.”

  “I meant no harm, Sully.”

  “Don’t call me that. Only Gil was allowed, and he’s dead.” Hope flared within her. “You said you can restore...”

  “We can only retrieve those who are within our star system. Your Gilland died a thousand light years from here.”

  “But you said you can traverse the dimensions...”

  “Once, we could. The ability is now lost to us. We expend all our energy to maintain our Retreat.”

  “And to kidnap people here.” Her accusation made him blanch. His eyes sparked red before returning to Gilland-grey.

  “There is always choice, not force. All come willingly. There are many existing here. Your kind and mine. Other species, as infinitely diverse as the cosmos. We live here in peace.” He waved his hand. “But beyond this Retreat, there is much discourse.”

  Suleah frowned, intrigued despite herself. Many alien encounters ended badly for humans—the Jalak war was one such tragedy. Now, aliens gave humans wide berth. The Jalaks called humans a scourge on the galaxy, not without some justification. Star systems had been devastated by the war, dying suns testament to the depths some humans descended to gain victory over their oppressors. The Empire was trying to right the wrongs, but the Jalak Federation and their allies were unforgiving.

  “Was the accident so bad that I would have died?” she asked.

  “Yes. To save you, I brought you here, before you were prepared. Before I asked your permission. I would have explained, but there was no time.” He paused. “You discovered the deception with the wound on your finger. The transference heals all injuries. The small cut was overlooked.”

  Suleah folded her arms. “I want to go back.”

  “Impossible.”

  “You said you can enter the world, my reality, then why can’t I?”

  “I can no longer traverse the dimension since I have taken this form, this substance. I am human.”

  “Hardly human,” she said.

  Rainbows flared in his eyes, the red sparks she now knew were anger. What did he have to be angry about?

  Because, Suleah, you and I are matched.

  Matched. Another word for mated. The idea was horrifying.

  “I don’t want to be here, with you, or anyone else. I have my own life, my own work.”

  “You can have both here, Suleah. More life than even you can imagine.” He held up his hands, examining them. “This frail casing you call the body contains a universe of experiences and emotions. Nothing in my former existence compares to this.”

  “You had no substance?”

  “We were once flesh creatures, but the destruction altered us. We lost the corporeal form. We lost many things. But by becoming human, I have gained so much. The ability to touch you, to smile and laugh.” He paused, his eyes muted rainbows. “To love you.”

  “You don’t know the meaning of the word, to do what you’ve done to me.” She swallowed more recriminations. His bewilderment showed her the creature had no understanding of what it meant to be human. “What am I supposed to do here in this reality of yours?”

  “Our reality, Suleah. This is for you. I am for you. We are together.”

  She backed up. “I don’t want you.”

  He frowned. “I am your Gilland. More than Gilland. I can be—”

  “You aren’t Gil. You can never be him. Never! I want to get out of this horror.”

  “Even if it were possible to leave, why would you prefer to return to those of your kind who scorn you? To a world that has nothing to give you, when I can offer life and love?”

  “You can’t offer me love.”

  “You are wrong.” He took a step towards her.

  “Stay away from me. Just stay away.”

  He retreated. “If that is your wish, then I will stay away for as long as you want. But realise this. You cannot leave the Retreat, Suleah. To bring you through the dimension, the transference altered your physical composition. You would die if you tried to return.”

  “Then I’m your prisoner?”

  “No, Suleah. Never that.” His look was pure horror, his voice hoarse. “You are free to go where you wish. Except return to your own world. Here, all that you desire can be yours. Just allow me—”

  “Go to hell!” She flung the Moet down on the cushions and stalked from the room. Once free of the dome, she hitched up her robe and ran down the passageway through the chateau entrance and out across the lawn.

  She turned to look up at Xanadu and was it her imagination, but at the top window, she saw the silhouette of a man... No, not man, an alien who had brought her to this place for his—its—own antidote for loneliness. The utter bastard.

  She turned away and walked... and walked. Sometimes, she ran—away from him... it—and her own horror. She had always hated to be controlled, confined, Gil understood that and gave her as much space as she needed—when it suited him, she reminded herself.

  But the creature in the chateau, when would it invade her privacy, her thoughts, impose itself on her?

  She ran until her heart and lungs burned with fire. When she recovered her senses, she found herself on blue sand, grit chafing her sandaled feet. In the sky a large ringed planet circled by ten silver moons—Daedalus—she recognised it from the last holiday she had with Gil.

  “Get out of my mind, you monster!” Even now the alien was probing her mind for memories in order to seduce and subdue.

  The dazzling azure beach she had once walked with Gil stretched as far as the eye could see. In the distance, she saw a silver obelisk, and in its shadow, figures moved.

  People!

  She raced towards them, but no matter how long she ran and then walked when she could run no more, the people remained distant.

  Suleah turned away. Was this another Retreat for another prisoner and their alien keeper?

  No, Suleah. His mind touched hers.

  “Go to hell.” She turned away and stalked across the beach, halting before a gently rolling sea. Creatures frolicked in the golden water. She could go no further that way.

  Suleah walked for hours, crossing more territory, some of it almost like home. One vista she saw was Terran-inspired because of the replica of the ancient palace. Taj Mahal, they had called it. Built for love, so the legend said.

  No matter how beautiful, no matter how exotic, there was no escape from this horror-reality. Her intellect accepted it, but her heart rejected the prison.

  She returned, exhausted, to her own Retreat, and sank down beside the stream cutting through the fragrant grass and cooled her feet in the clear water. She hu
gged her knees to her chest and rested her face on her knees and wept.

  “Suleah.” His hand on her shoulder made her flinch. “Please do not do this.”

  She shrugged off his touch, her skin crawling. “I saw others here.”

  “Yes. There are many.”

  “The missing persons from this sector and from the planet, they’re all here?”

  “And from other places.”

  “Then why can’t I meet them?”

  “In time you can.” He sat down beside her. For a moment his gaze rested on her feet and ankles. “You came here without knowing, without understanding or accepting. Your anger would disrupt the others.”

  “So I’m a caged pet until I accept the rules and behave?”

  He frowned. “It is not like that.”

  “Then how is it?” She jumped to her feet. “I don’t belong here. I don’t want you. Do you understand? I hate you for what you did.”

  “Would you have preferred I let you die?” His gaze searched hers. “Then I am sorry.”

  “Isn’t it too late to say sorry?” She turned on her heel and walked away. She would never see him again, have nothing to do with him. He might be her keeper, but she would not be tamed. He would regret the day he had brought her to this place.

  Yet, in bringing her to the Retreat, he had saved her life. So he said. Perhaps another lie?

  Death was preferable than this existence.

  If you truly wish for death before your time, there are ways, Suleah, he told her. Ways we take when the loneliness is too much to bear.

  “Stay out of my mind!” Reaching Xanadu, she ran down the corridors until she reached her apartment. She flung herself inside, the door sealing behind her. She activated the lock and leaned against the lintel, struggling for breath.

  The next morning, on the dispenser tray, Suleah found a red rose. As she stared at it, it fell apart like confetti.

  Next day, he sent her another rose, the petals misshapen. Subsequent roses were better crafted. One even had a faint rose scent. She spurned each one.

  The next rose, she could only call it that by its shape, was made from pink crystal, its transparent stem filled with sand that swept up and down the stem in a never-ending circuit. Its scent reminded her of red dust. So utterly alien.

  She kept this and every rose thereafter, enjoying the beauty of the flower for its own sake, however bizarre, but not acknowledging its creator.

  How many days, how many weeks? Suleah lost track of time. She established her routine, the opposite to his. From her window, she had seen that he walked in the garden during the morning, so she made it her domain in the afternoon. It appeared he respected the arrangement, because she never encountered him outside, or in the chateau.

  Where he ate—if he ate—she cared not. She ate her meals in her room, the tasteless food dispensed through the computer console. How could she ask for real food without interacting with him?

  The console gave her everything she asked. Clothes. Disc-books. She read, she studied, she slept, the pattern of her life comforting in its monotony. She saw no one, just him in the garden at a distance, tending one of the flowerbeds, trimming a rose bush, with a servitor hovering nearby, offering tools and refreshments.

  She dreamed at night. Of Gilland. Not the alien-Gilland, her Gil. She awoke sometimes crying for him, wanting him. Dying for him. And on those mornings other gifts would be awaiting her at the dispenser.

  Once, a book of poetry—a real book made from paper with hand-written verses from an alien poet whose name she did not know.

  Other gifts were dispensed, always exotic. Perfume, or a statue, or a hologram picture of an alien landscape, she collected them all, curiosity overcoming abhorrence.

  The line of gifts extended along the shelf built into one wall. Fifty gifts. Fifty days. Fifty days or fifty years? What did it matter, the passage of her imprisonment?

  But one day, she decided, it did matter. This half-life was unendurable.

  Because she had not spoken to another for so long, she found herself talking to the walls, singing the songs she wrote each day, playing the music she composed on the dulcimer.

  The first instrument had arrived in the dispenser, misshapen and stringless. Each time she mentally pictured the dulcimer, a new version would arrive, better-formed than its predecessor. Many days later, having learned how to project clearly, the dispenser had produced a beautiful dulcimer, perfect in every detail. Its satin-smooth wood inlaid with red roses.

  Stroking the strings, Suleah had cried for its perfect resonance. She had not had the time for music before. But it had been her love for as long as she could remember. Had she not become a planetologist she might have studied music at the Academy.

  No! That was a lie. Her music had been forbidden, her father insisting that she follow in his footsteps. Her father was not a man to deny. Her mother had learned that early. Suleah had rebelled, but in the end, she had acquiesced. As her mother before her. She had hated her father for his tyranny for so many years, had not spoken to him, or seen him in... how long? She had lost track of time.

  She had been off-world when he had died. The funeral was long over before she came back home to make her peace with the man whose remains had been enshrined in the Star Service Academy garden. A great man, her father. Commander Devereux—well loved by his peers, but a bastard.

  It had been Gilland who had healed her of her hatred, turning her anger to understanding and then to respect. But love? Never that. Even Gilland could not coerce her to love her father.

  Gilland—who fought his own demons and understood the hurt carried by others...

  At his memory, tears came to her eyes.

  She snatched up her dulcimer and her papers and fled to the garden. It was afternoon. Her time. She would be safe from him.

  She rounded the corner and halted. Alien-Gilland turned to her.

  “You—” The words froze on her lips as she saw him. He was paler and thinner than she remembered. Something of the sparkle had gone from his being. Or, perhaps it had never been there? She was seeing him in his true form. Weeks of isolation had hardened her, quashed the romantic memories. She had refused to allow him to access her mind, so he had nothing to feed off. Without the memories, he faded. His species was vampiric in nature. A simple explanation. Logical. Somehow unconvincing.

  “I am sorry,’ he said. “It is later than I thought. The garden is yours.” He turned away, striding across the lawn, his blue robe flapping around him in his haste to depart. He couldn’t wait to get away from her, as much as she wanted him gone from her, it seemed.

  Suleah took her customary place in the white rose arbour and strummed her dulcimer. Today, the music brought little comfort. She set aside the instrument. On the ground, she saw a sheet of paper, fluttering, the breeze trapping it against the trellis.

  She captured it and saw the lines of a poem, written in a bold hand. Lines crossed out, new words substituted. Some of the words were Terran-standard, French, others alien, a swirl of colour. His language, she presumed.

  She knew enough of Gillan’s native tongue to read the scrawled French, and like a Frenchman, the words were about love, loss, and sorrow. But what did the swirls of colour mean?

  Her gaze, of its own accord, returned to the house. Was the alien writing poetry? The book of poetry with its unknown poet, was alien-Gilland its author? She shook her head. The real Gilland enjoyed poetry but never wrote it. His eloquence was not derived from the written word. His loving and his smile were poetry enough for her.

  Suleah dressed slowly that evening. She and Gil had always dressed formally for dinner. It made the undressing that much more tantalizing. She laughed. Even alone, in captivity, she kept to the custom they had established so long ago, dressing for dinner, sitting at a formal setting of fine white china, silverware and crystal glasses. Light from candles burning from silver candelabrum. The dispenser had managed to produce all this after many bungled attempts.

 
Before she changed her mind, she left her room and traversed the passageway, the servitor escorting her, illuminating her way.

  The curtains parted as she stepped into the dome. She saw him reclining on the cushions. Strange that he should keep to the decor of their first night together. Perhaps he enjoyed Xanadu for its own sake?

  His servitor chimed a greeting and Gilland stood slowly.

  “Am I disturbing you?” she asked.

  “No.” His gaze was dark, impenetrable.

  “I found this in the garden. It is yours?” She stepped forward, holding out the paper.

  He took it carefully from her, not wanting to touch or to be touched, it seemed.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “You’re a poet?”

  “Do you think poetry is confined to your species?” A touch of reprimand in that tone. Yes, she deserved it, she acknowledged. Typical human arrogance to think that poetry was confined to one species.

  “It’s just that Gil never wrote poetry.”

  “I am a hybrid creature, Gilland, and the original alien. I am finding my own self within this new life.” He studied her deeply. “Will you join me? I am tired of dining alone. Would you like Moet to drink?”

  “I’ll stay for a while, but nothing to drink. Champagne is for celebrations.”

  “Is it?” He went to add something but instead turned away.

  She settled on the cushions facing him. A servitor hovered before her offering her platters of food. She sampled the cuisine and wrinkled her nose.

  “Like last time, it doesn’t have a taste,” she said.

  “What is taste?”

  “It’s... when you eat something, your mouth... Stars! You’ve never tasted anything?”

  “The word has no meaning for me. Will you explain taste?”

  She thought slowly, discarding various explanations. How to explain a human sense to an alien? “Everything has a particular flavour. It’s like smell.”