On an unknown alien planet two members of the Space Service who have been captured and transformed review what has happened to them. They are unlikely to be rescued - have they become reconciled to their situation?

Note 1: I first published this story in 1987 in a small British SF magazine (Cassandra Anthology) under the pseudonym ‘Richard Kollo’. Since it was angled towards a science fiction rather than a TG readership, it may not be explicit enough for TG sites; but I have posted it unchanged, save for some minor corrections of punctuation, and should be grateful for any feedback.

Note 2: The names are pronounced: Lotey –ahmeh, Ni-roweh; i.e. the final ‘e’is sounded.

On Summer Nights We Remember

“Kris, what the hell are we doing here?”

The evening is warm and sensual; dark, drowsy and yet alive, alive with the whirring and humming of insects and nameless night creatures. Somewhere outside a taumra’a is being played, its sound seductive, at once metallic and resonant, pure and classical in its technique, yet it can catch at the heart, can lift it and soar with it up to a joy, to a pitch of ecstasy. Andy is lying prone, a cushion under his chin, in his eyes a distant, thoughtful look.

“But what the hell are we doing here?”

“We were kidnapped. Surely you can’t have forgotten that already?”

I am lying on my back in the darkness, letting the music envelope me. It seems to sink into every pore in my body, filling the space in me and around me. I hear it, feel it and am part of it, am held and caressed by it, and there is no time, there is nothing but the now.

“Please, Kris, please don’t be flippant. I want to be serious for a bit. We’ve got no idea where this place actually is. Oh, I know what it’s called in half a dozen local languages, but its location…. Where in Creation are we? There can’t ever have been contact with this planet, this civilisation before our ship got here, can there? How close are our people to making contact again? All this – we’ve never come across anything like it before. It’s too fantastic.”

I am silent, and the music is a veil pulled over me.

“They’re so much like us, Kris, so very like us except in one vital way, but that difference makes them so strange. Are they really human beings?”

“Andy, you and I, we both know with more certainty than we know almost anything else about this world, we know in the most intimate possible way, whatever else they might be, they really are human.”

And Andy has to sigh, for he knows that what I have said is true.

“Look, it’s no use thinking there’s anyone out there looking for us. We’ve been written off, you’ve got to realise that. Another ship missing on active service, nothing more. Remember what they told you at Induction: there are thousands gone that way. By now our records have been tagged ‘Missing Believed Dead’ and shoved back in an unused memory bank. It’s only going to be a machine that remembers us on Earth, not any living person. It’s why they prefer people ‘without ties’.”

He gets up and goes to the window. He draws the gauze curtain aside slightly and the night, the warmth, the insects calling, the drone of the taumra’a seem to enfold us more closely.

“Look at that sky. Look at those stars. It’s like no chart I’ve ever seen before. None of the star patterns we learned even approaches it. We’re lost, aren’t we? Lost beyond the edge of the universe.”

I lie still, watching the figure silhouetted in the darkness who gazes out over the balcony; across the little enclosed courtyard with the fountain that still murmurs to itself, and the garden of fruits and flowers; across the rooftops to the horizon and the distant wooded hills where the lodge is; and over and beyond them all to the stars. I study the outline that stands there unmoving.

“If only we still had the navigator with us,” he says. “Erlander would have known where we are, just by looking at the stars.”

“No,” I say, “I think not even Erlander.”

Then I say suddenly “Andy, that’s not what’s troubling you, is it, knowing where we are? It’s a lot deeper, isn’t it? You’ve been restless for the past few days, more than I’ve ever known you since we came here. It’s as though you’ve been thinking too much, and you’re thinking about what’s happened to us, and what we’ve become.”

He does not answer, and still there is the drone of the taumra’a as though the darkness itself, the nothingness, is vibrating, playing to us. Then he lets the curtain fall and comes and sits down close to me, and I hear the rustle of silken fabric and the whispered clatter of bangles and bracelets.

“Why us, Kris, why us? I do think about it, and even now I can hardly believe what happened. In the Service they prepared us for all sorts of things: mechanical failure, mutiny, starvation, capture by aliens, torture, insanity, even death – we could handle them all. But not this. Never in my deepest fantasies…”

“No?”

“No! Never. What have we been turned into, Kris? What sort of freaks are we?”

“Not freaks. You’re looking at it from the wrong point of view. To our…our captors we must have seemed like freaks when they first found us, but now we’ve become real men. That’s what Meta’en would say, and the other…do we call them ‘Masters’ or ‘Mistresses’? The concepts are difficult in Anglo; shall we talk in Makhaled?”

“Please no, Kris, don’t. I feel while I can at least talk to you in Anglo I still exist as Andrew Berenson. If we talk in Makhaled I shall become Loteame again. For the first time since – it, I’ve looked at myself, into my own heart, and I’m frightened. It’s as if I’ve been walking down a long tunnel and I turn round suddenly and there’s Lieutenant Berenson, everything I was, still back at the entrance. I’m not him anymore. Every step I take gets farther and farther away from him. Oh, Kris, I want to remember, somehow, that I am Andrew Berenson.”

I put my arms round his shoulders, for I see that he is near to tears. We are close to each other now after all that has happened. When we were fellow officers I would not have dared such a thing which at the very least would have excited whispered comment among the rest of the crew; in fact there was no physical contact between any of us aside from the formal shaking of hands, isolated as we were in our own cabins with only sense-u-tapes for comfort. But in the life we now lead it seems right and good that we can touch and embrace each other without fear.

Stroking his long hair I say “Andy, don’t upset yourself like this. There’s no need. Is our life here so terrible? Just think, we’re probably the luckiest of the whole ship. If any of the crew survived they must be scattered across the whole of this world and they could be, well, in the temples or taverns perhaps, anywhere. They haven’t split us up, have they? Isn’t that something to be thankful for?”

The moonlight, I notice – for there is a moon, just as on Earth there is a moon – catches his hair which shimmers in a soft golden cascade down his back.

“At least we’re living in comfort here, Andy. Why not try and relax, enjoy it a little?”

“Lie back and think of Earth, is that it? Lie back and enjoy being ravished?”

“You know that’s not fair. She would never do anything… never force us… not Meta’en. She’s like a tigress sometimes, yes, but not… You’re in a bad way, aren’t you? What’s happened to the bright, vivacious Loteame everyone loves?”

“No, Kris, please don’t. Let me stay Andrew Berenson a bit longer.”

“No, Loteame. And you must only call me Niroe. We can’t go back, you know. I was Kristopher Ewert. Was, that’s the thing, but no longer. Now I’m Niroe, you’re Loteame. There’s nothing we can do.”

Still I stroke his hair. The taumra’a is more urgent, more rhythmic.

“It was all luck, I’m sure. Pure luck that they found us. We were already lost, don’t forget, far beyond the known regions of space, and they were perhaps scanning new regions too, farther than they ever had before. And they came across us and brought us in. We crashed on the planet, with what results we know. With the ship gone we just became exotic specimens that would fetch a good price.”

He disentangles my arm and turns his back to me.

“I’m sorry,” I say, “I don’t seem to be saying much to help.”

He turns to face me, and the melody of his voice cracks. “I’ve seen Quenelle.”

“Quenelle? You’ve seen him? But…how?” I find this astonishing. Of course we are not allowed out alone.

“It was last week, when we were all taken out on that excursion to the country, out to the hills. You remember? As our carriage was crossing the market place I lifted a corner of the curtain while no one was looking, and I caught a glimpse of him. He’s changed, Kris, like us he’s changed. But it was him, I’m certain. That face – oh yes it was Quennelle all right. And he was dancing. You know, as we’ve been trained. But he was on a wooden platform surrounded by a crowd, and he was dancing.”

I say nothing. Etienne Quennelle had been cold, humourless, puritanical. He would not even use sense-u-tapes. Most of us thought him prudish.

“His hair… you remember how black it was and how short he kept it cut? Well it was long, down over his shoulders, flowing and wild.” Andy swallows hard. “I suppose they consider him exciting. He was stripped to the waist, Kris, and… dancing.”

The darkness is a living presence that surrounds us and touches our faces with warm fingers. The taumra’a is harsh, insistent.

“It seems we have two choices,” I say after a long silence. “Either to be secluded in private, or to become public property.”

And then the dam is broken. Andy is upon my shoulder, his tears coming in floods.

“We are property. She owns us, Kris. Meta’en owns us. There’s no escape is there? There’s no escape.”

“No.” I echo him hollowly. “There’s no escape.”

The taumra’a is softer now, more lyrical. We are lying on our backs close to each other. Loteame is quiet, his tears spent.

“It’s easier for you, Niroe. You’re the sort they find attractive. You’ve got dark hair and dark eyes, and you’ve got the body, like Etienne – whatever they call him now. Me, I’m just thin and plain. They make me play this role, and I’m not even any good at it.”

I turn my head and look at the slim delicate form lying next to me. So he really doesn’t know! It’s true I have the body. I’ve learned to move well enough. And I am witty and charming, for those who own us demand that we shall be bright and intelligent, able to discourse on a wide range of suitable topics, to write poetry and sing songs, as well as to move and to dance. But I can never compete with his beauty, his magnetism, his sensuality which so captivates them. I have learned to enjoy the life too much, so that I am too relaxed. I can never seem to attain that passionate intensity which makes him so much the object of her desire. Meta’en with those burning, hungry eyes can talk to me, but she will never love me. But Loteame… And he doesn’t realise it! I am embracing him again now, talking earnestly to him.

“Loteame, can’t you see you’re her favourite? All the others are jealous of you. Look, she calls you to her as often as the rest of us put together. You’re not plain, you’re attractive, desirable, beautiful, everything the rest of us long to be. She sometimes talks to me about you afterwards. ‘His hair is a river of gold’ – that’s what she said once. I’m sure she loves you above all of us.”

I kiss him, and our noserings clash and jingle, and we laugh a little, as we always do when that happens.

“Promise me,” I say, “that you won’t let her sell me. We’re still together, we’ve still got each other, and that’s something, isn’t it?” and smiling he promises.

“Believe me,” I say, “you really are beautiful.” The tears are drying fast now.

“Thanks,” he says, “it’s not true, but you’re a good friend, Niroe.”

Soon, soon we know it will be time. The taumra’a is quiet, deceptively gentle, lulling its hearers into security and sleep. Loteame whispers to me:

“Niroe, which one will it be tonight? You? Me? Both of us together?”

But I do not answer, for who can say which of us will be called? Every night we must wait in expectation, yet it still comes as a little shock to learn that it is our own turn. The taumra’a is building to a climax, louder and louder, to a great chord that clangs in dissonance, and then suddenly it is completely silent, and we can hear again the whirring and humming of insects in the night air, and know indeed that it is the time, that now Meta’en, our Master, will make her choice and call whom she will to serve her. Perhaps Loteame, perhaps me, Niroe. Or perhaps both of us together.

Copyright 1987, 2014.