Space Bride

by R. C. Capasso

Part 1 appears in this issue.

conclusion

Chaos reigned. Despite all the identification badges, the numbers, the appointment times, and the lighted strips on the pavement meant to keep everyone in line, it was like a cattle market. Bodies jostled, voices cried, and even the tall Loreans with their staffs and comm devices turned white in frustration.

Lataya trembled all over. She clutched the curl over her right shoulder. It was still blue, but was that a yellow hair tangled in it, visibly shortening?

She stared at the back of the Dolic female in line before her. A lovely iridescent hump ran between her shoulder blades. Lataya’s back began to sting. She wasn’t growing a hump, was she? That wasn’t the plan. But could it be good? Should she let it grow? If only her contracted spouse had said: “Blue hair, not yellow. Only aquatic species. No protuberances.” She would have complied. She was nothing if not adaptable.

She tried her mantras. “Peace. Peace. Be the shape. Be the shape.” But her entire body rocked with the smells and sounds from the crowd. There were too many identities, strong, assertive, claiming their space in existence. She couldn’t fight that. She was going to lose her projection. It was all going to fall apart.

She couldn’t go back to her planet, with its desolation, its poverty, its laws against shifters. She had a bruise on her lower back from a beating suffered one night on a lonely road. The one spot that she could never shape completely. The mark that appeared on every species she embodied. The mark she always had to clothe or paint or keep in shadow.

The line inched forward and one of the Loreans rumbled into his comm, “Lataya 2817. Your spouse is here. Step forward.”

Lataya clutched her stomach. This is it. Be the shape. Be the shape.

A tall, bulbous-headed male planted himself in front of her. A Jekkan. If only she’d known.

“Hey, not bad.” His voice whistled through the multiple nasal passages. “I think we need to do something about the hair.”

In an instant she tossed back the curls and revealed a lumpy scalp.

“Whoa! How did you do that?” He stepped forward and squinted.

“I am Lataya.” The extra nasal passage stung slightly as she spoke.

“What the...?”

Another Jekkan stood beside her purchaser. “Hey, Lom, what you got there?”

“I don’t know. She’s...”

Lataya’s hearts pounded as she tried to secure the image. Her head lowered as her spine bent. Head bumps, head bumps, she chanted mentally, but even as the words reverberated in her brain, her hands and feet expanded, the digits linking together through webbing.

“She’s a shifter!” Lom shouted. “I paid for a humanoid and they sent me a shifter?”

“Humanoid.” Lataya scanned her memories as her body whipped out of control, transforming to the little pale farm laborer, the eagle on Colony 8, the sexless companion of Reisel.

The Jekkan onlooker laughed. “Hey, Lom! You got a bonus. You can have her be something different every night.”

“It’s disgusting!” Her purchaser stumbled backwards.

Someone in the crowd shouted, “Just make her be beautiful for bed. She can look like anything when she’s scrubbing the floors.”

The figures in the crowd merged, morphing into bizarre fluid shapes as Lataya’s eyes welled up with tears. Loneliness was better than this. The amonee fields were better.

“I want my money back.”

Lataya stared at Lom’s bulbous head as he swiveled, screaming for the merchant in charge. The line swerved around her, spouses anxious to get on with their business. Pheromones bewildered her and voices taunted, some cursing her as a shifter, some laughing at the weird conglomeration of her rapidly altering appendages and colorings. Most of all she shrank back from the little happy shrieks as couples around her met, embraced and whinnied or crowed.

She barely felt the hands of a Lorean official gripping at her flexing arms. The crowd dropped away as she was shoved out of the market site, off to a grimy area of the dock. “We’ll deal with you later,” a voice growled.

Nausea from the changes swept through her. Losing all control, she reverted to her true self.

* * *

“Rumi, have you got some of your juice?”

The wait at the docks was inevitably long and disappointing, so Halan always had the kids pack snacks. With a nod, he thanked Rumi and bent over the trembling shifter. He knew nothing of their biology, but she didn’t look well. There was a large, ugly bruise on her back.

“May I offer you this? It might help.”

The being lifted wide, beautiful eyes to him. “You shouldn’t bother. I’m not even humanoid.”

“But you get thirsty? Your lips look dry.”

Her eyelids lowered as if in weariness, but she accepted the juice and took two swallows, wetting her lips with a black, glistening tongue. “It’s just something leftover from another shape.”

He couldn’t keep towering over her like she was a blot on the pavement, so he tentatively sat down beside her. The kids imitated him, forming a circle around her. From a distance, no one would ever see her on the ground.

Halan glanced back at the dock, still a jumble of bodies. “It must have been hard, trying to be whatever that fellow wanted.”

The shifter lifted her head. “He didn’t specify humanoid. I could have done that.”

“Really?” Rumi spoke, her voice soft. “Forever?”

The creature shrugged, turning a bit away as if in shame.

Halan clapped a hand over his mouth. The problem with bringing the kids to the spouse-ship landings was that they got an early education into the ways of adults. He really owed them an apology for that. All he’d been trying to do was present himself in a forthright manner, so a prospective spouse would accept him and his situation, eyes open. But he should have been thinking about the children’s eyes, taking in the couples and the transactions. Even when he tried his best, he was an idiot.

Yet he wouldn’t apologize for letting the kids see someone suffering. Their hearts were all big enough to handle it.

“My name’s Halan. These are Rumi, Char and Marka. My children.”

“Lataya 2817. Although I guess the number is invalid, now.”

“You don’t expect to be marrying him, the one who—?”

“No.” Lataya made a move as if to stand. “He’ll get his money back. And they’ll... do something with me.” She got one knee under her, but swayed unsteadily. “I’ll be fine.”

“I suppose you can do a disguise, and they wouldn’t find...” He stopped. He had no idea how to talk to someone like her. He wanted to say that it would be a shame to change from what she was, but that might be offensive.

She sank back onto her heels and put one hand to her head. “I’d give anything to be just one shape forever. Even if it was hideous.”

“You’re not hideous.” The words spilled out because they were true. He took a breath. “I like how you look.”

She gazed up at him in silence.

“This is just a tough colony.” He gestured toward the town. “The planet is beautiful and rich with lots of potential. But the settlers come from everywhere, and they’re not always the easiest to get along with. You think they’d be working together, but...” He was nattering, filling the air with words.

Char tugged at his sleeve. “She should come with us, Papa.”

Lataya glanced at Char, sucked in a breath, then turned. She hadn’t said no. But perhaps she was being kind, offering him a way to back out.

In his mind Halan sought the image of Mala, his love, his guide. She was smiling, nodding. Yet maybe that was just what he wanted to see. “Well, the lady might not want...” He felt his voice rising and his face going a deeper black.

Lataya gazed at each of them slowly, her eyes so large they might all slip inside the orbs, swimming forever. “You want a spouse? I don’t know if I can—”

He waved a hand, quickly, letting her off the hook. “We want a family. But only if the person wants us. We don’t actually have a contract for anyone. We just come to the landings in case...”

“You could come and see the house.” Rumi smoothed her skirt. “It’s small but there’s a garden and fruit trees, and down the lane there’s a school where Papa teaches four different species languages.”

“Four?” Lataya looked at him and for the first time there was the hint of a smile. “My languages come to me with my shape, but they leave as soon as I change.”

“Papa can teach you.” Char nodded confidently. “I can count to eleven in three languages. Do you want to hear?”

Lataya nodded, listening intently. Halan caught his breath as minute changes flicked across her body. Kettan eyebrows, a Dolic ear, and even Promothan gills. All matching the spoken numbers, all gone in a flash as the counting stopped. What kind of mind could reach so deeply into another species that a few elemental words could evoke part of their essence? What kind of heart?

Halan pulled off his identity badge and handed it to her. He laid the photo of the property on her lap and swallowed. “We have a guest room. No expectations. You could stay, or not. As you wished.”

* * *

Lataya stared at the tall thin figure and his beautiful, healthy children. Her heart slowed as her body rested easy in its natural shape. No words beat in her mind, no colors or potential body parts, no new nostrils or scents. Not even the stinging of the amonee thorns. Just the names Halan, Rumi, Char and Marka filled her thoughts. Their faces and their voices as they were, seeing her as she was, not as she needed to be.

She looked at Marka, the quietest one. “I can make mosha cake and eleven kinds of stew. Would you like me to cook for you?”

Marka nodded, just one slow inclination of her head, while Rumi smiled and Char asked, “Which stews? Chocona?”

She handed Halan’s documents back to him. “You’re very kind. I’d love to see your home. Would we need to go to a market for the chocona beans?”

“There’s a produce stand on the way.” Rumi slipped a thin hand around her arm as she stood. They headed for a neat cart parked at the far end of the dock. “You’ve come at the perfect season.”

Lataya glanced across at Halan as he lifted Marka and Char in long, wiry arms. Perhaps a season. Perhaps, finally, more.