I just started to translate in English THE GOLDEN PATH, the Episode 2 of the series The MCCIB Investigations, the sci-fi detective story I created as a spin off of the Spaceborne Marine saga.
My intention is to publish Episode 1 and Episode 2 SIMULTANEOUSLY.
I am taking into consideration also to make a special price, or something like that, like a special offer in bundle. We will see. At the moment I am still on the "translating & making plans" part of the job.
As a little gift, you can find here the draft of the FIRST CHAPTER of THE GOLDEN PATH.
Enjoy.
CHAPTER 1
Ten Days Before: HIATUS
Sema Harna stretched herself and opened her eyes.
The setting sun of the morassian summer was playing with the dense and lush tree crowns.
The foliage rustled, making the awakening sweet, as if the whole nature of Kauas, her birth village, was calling with a silken voice.
When she was a teenager, Sema had thought that this idyllic atmosphere was a drawback: real life was in Aras, Moras planetary capitol. All the interesting things were happening there. Now, as adult, she didn’t think it anymore.
Aras had been ravaged by the war and reconstruction, even with the current fast pace, would have taken years to put everything back in order. Kauas, instead, had remained unscathed from destruction, as if it had been wrapped in a space-time bubble. Houses and inhabitants were still all there. But if someone tried to move away less than fifty kilometers would have find gutted roads and homes in rubble and would have been brought back to the harsh reality. Nothing had happened to Kauas, and nothing kept happening.
Using her logical mind she went through all the events that brought her back home, several millions of lightyears away from his job on the Earth
The trial in absentia against Hillman had been demanding her much more than the investigation. Preparing the documentation and the hunt to the evidences of what had been found in the Pandora Pot, this was the name given to the database found in the villa of the missing billionaire, had drained all her energies.
She didn’t realize it until the day she testified in the tribunal, at the peak of his job. She chanted the Ansch, before getting inside the courtroom. She exercised a tight and absolute control on herself despite Hillman defense attorney had provoked her in all the possible ways, challenging her competences and the validity of the evidences.
She was been able to answer with calm, responding point after point, trying to remain always focused at her best and weighing every word or pause during her three days long deposition. She couldn’t relax neither when she had been cross-examined by the prosecutor, the side for which she and the MCCIB were working for. Lawyer Erin Bertrand solicited her to speak, to expose, to show, to explain. When the verdict of one of the biggest and important trial for corruption since the Federation existed was emitted, her satisfaction was deep. She had the sharp awareness to have made an excellent job. But when she went out of the courtroom, she realized to have no forces even to formulate the simplest thought.
She called Red Stone at the office and asked him if she could sleep in his home. He answered yes. Her fingerprint to unlock the apartment was recorded in the domotic system memories of the Earthling, since in the last six months they were regularly dating. She went in and she didn’t even wait for him to be back home.
She didn’t eat nor celebrate. She undressed, made a quick shower and stuffed herself into bed, under the blankets, curled in fetal position. When Red was back home found her that way, as if she was dead. She remained unconscious until the next morning, when she awakened, and Red, while bringing her the breakfast at the bed, suggested to take a vacation.
At first Sema rejected the idea. Then, while devouring, in the grip of an anomalous hunger, the abundant breakfast that Red had prepared (pancakes with maple syrup, fried bacon, scrambled eggs, a orange juice jug, a big cup of black coffee, an assortment of sweets, dried fruit, a little bowl of vegetables with citronette, toasted bread slices, for an total of proteins and calories of which she didn't care to calculate the amount…) she realized that she was putting in danger her physical and mental health. And she got to the conclusion that even a Morassian deserved a break.
Two masculine hands touched her neck, diverting her from the thoughts. They went up and caressed her face. Red Stone’s put his lips on hers. The kiss lasted for several seconds, then she interrupted the contact.
«No… Red… you shouldn’t do it. Red… somebody could see us» she murmured almost inaudible.
«Sema, your parent’s home is surrounded by a garden with tall trees. None of the neighbors can see us. Are you worried for a kiss when you are sunbathing without a bra?»
Red turned around the lawn chair on the little patio, at the first floor of the small cottage, and sat on another one, beside the one occupied by Sema.
«We’re on Moras, not on the Earth. Here is normal for women to stay with bare breast during the summer…» she replied.
«Did you sleep well? It’s almost dinner time» he whispered.
Sema blinked to drive away the last traces of sleeping and sat up.
«By The Creator, I slept almost all the afternoon!»
He touched her hand, smiling, and kissed it.
«Making love after lunch is relaxing…» he murmured.
Sema pulled back the hand and saw him to assume a disappointed expression.
«Sorry, sweetheart, I didn’t want to be so abrupt. It’s better if you don’t touch me for a while.»
«What’s happened?»
Sema took a deep breath.
«Nothing bad. The thing is… I am still sensible.»
«I don’t get it…»
She sighed. They have been a couple for months already, but he had still troubles to understand certain differences between Morassians and Earthlings.
«Sexual morassian physiology, Red. Here on Moras we’re slow to get excited, that’s why we use the Shenk to stimulate the emotional part. But once awakened we’re slow to regain the control too. Sleeping and relaxing don’t favor a fast recovery of balance.»
Red chuckled.
«Are you telling me that you’re still wanting to have sex?»
She glanced at him for a long moment in the same way she would have glanced a clown inflating balloons during a funeral.
«Of course. The arousal cycle is in the descending phase but not over yet. It would take adrenaline production due to a stress situation to make me completely recover the rational side» Sema answered with the tone of a lecturer during a scientific symposium.
Red nodded.
«Well, since we have to go to dinner in five minutes I have something that will speed up you descending cycle. Or whatever it is…»
He gave her a tablet.
«Read. And they’re not good news.»
Sema took in her hand the device and her eyes rapidly scrolled the screen. She gave back the tablet with a sneer of disappointment.
She extended a hand and took the bra, beginning to wear it.
«Would you fasten it? I don’t want to make contortions.»
«Are you angry?»
«I am trying to think why Allen took such a decision.»
«Are you angry? Or worried?» he said again.
Red Stone fiddled with the hooks for a moment.
«Done.»
«Thank you…» the Morassian said. She extended again the hand, took a shirt and wore it.
From the waist down she had a very colorful skirt in morassian fabric, made with a fiber stronger and smoother than terrestrial silk, covering her long legs.
«Both things. I don’t understand why Allen didn’t talk to me about it. Working for the MCCIB and occupying the position he gave me I made some plans …»
She turned and glanced her Earthling partner.
«… Plans involving you too.»
«What do you fear?»
«Consequences for my career. I gave everything to arrive where I am now. And I repaid the MCCIB at the first occasion. You know what I’m talking about.»
«Pandora. I know. I was there too, did you forget it?»
Red sensed Sema’s body in tension.
«Among the consideration I’ve made, before our relationship started, there is also the fact that I wanted to remain on the Earth, at the MCCIB Head Quarter. But a new Director taking over can change everything…»
She hesitated for an instant.
«I don’t want to stay away from you, Red…» she added in a whisper.
«You’re looking almost as if you are falling in love» he said whispering in turn.
Sema leaned forward, their faces were very close.
«I am falling in love. In the morassian way…» she murmured «I beg you, sweetie… No. If you touch me it will happen a havoc.»
«It’s hard for me not doing it…»
Sema had to admit that this sentence sounded gratifying to her. Contrary to her expectations, the attraction Red had for her was showing no sign of winding down. She asked herself how he could bear that continuous emotive stress. With a huge effort she pulled away and began to rapidly regain the control on herself.
«You must understand something, Sema. Allen couldn’t refuse the assignment. Special Advisor of the President. Do you know what it means?» Red Stone said.
«Sure I know. After the FEXEC member Carlton Gore has been sentenced to 99 years of penal colony on Regulus for a list of very serious crimes, from high treason to aggravated corruption to felony in genocide, West needed a watchdog, to avoid that such a thing would repeat again. And who was better qualified for the job than the Director of the MCCIB?»
«I see that your rational part is taking over. What is worrying you?»
«Who is going to take his seat. And what the new Director will decide about me. As DFI Supervisor you’re untouchable, Red. But mine is an administrative assignment, it’s about trust.»
«They can’t kick you out of the Bureau!» Red exclaimed.
«No, they can’t. But they can move me in some shitty place.»
Sema thought she was completely in control: her hands looked for those ones of Red and held them.
«I don’t want to stay away from you» she repeated with intensity in the voice.
Red nodded.
«Nor do I.»
A long moment of silence followed, their looks lost into one another.
«I think there’s nothing to worry, my love. Who could be so idiot to fire the one who discovered the most important corruption case of the millennium?» Red said, at last in the attempt to calm down the Morassian.
«Red, we Morassian have a saying: the only endless universe is populated by fools.»
Stone bursted laughing, but when a thought crossed his mind, the laugh died in his mouth.
He embraced Sema and held her tight.
«We still have a week of leave, sweetheart. We’re light years far from Earth, from New York and from the MCCIB Head Quarter. We can’t do anything. It is what it is.»
A feminine voice, coming from the ground floor of the villa, called them in morassian language.
«My mother… » Sema murmured «Dinner’s ready.»
They stood up and he tried to hold her hand. Sema didn’t react. Red, this time, understood immediately: it was a matter of convenience. The Morassians didn’t do things they considered stupid or illogical such as walking hand in hand, even when they were engaged.
«Sorry, I…» he said.
«Red, don’t be sorry. I like when you do it. But here on Moras is an illogical gesture» she said.
«Well, then. No problem.»
«Now let’s go downstairs, before my parents start to think we’re making Shenk again…»
Sema was lying on the bed, but couldn’t get asleep. The cabin of the starship which was carrying her and Red back to Earth was wrapped in the dark, but thoughts didn’t stop to cross her mind.
She was still thinking to what had happened on Moras
The remaining week of leave was gone sooner than expected and Sema had begun to relax, because despite the fact that Red was too much effusive and illogical for the morassian standards, her parents had begun to accept him. In particular her mother liked the Earthling. The last evening they spent in Kauas, after the dinner, they were one beside the other, getting some fresh air and admiring the two moons shining in the sky of Moras, when Red couldn’t resist: he caressed her face for a moment, glancing her intensely. For her it had almost been like making Shenk. They didn’t dare to make other gestures.
Instinctively he turned around and sharply retracted his hand.
«Your mother saw us. I hope this will not cause you problems» he murmured apologizing.
«I hope it won’t. We should reserve our effusions when having sex. If you want we can go upstairs and make Shenk…» she answered very calmly.
Red giggled.
«All this is illogical, instead. They perfectly know that we make sex. But I can’t give you an innocent caress in front of them. On the Earth it would be the other way around.»
«We’re not on the Earth… »she had murmured with a lecturing tone in the voice. Then she judged her answer unjustified. Red’s intentions were good. And he had restrained himself, trying to adjust to the self-controlled and ordered behavior of Moras.
She leaned forward and gave him a fast and clumsy kiss.
«… When we will be back home, I’ll be the one that should conform. I promise that I’ll be a good girl and I’ll do all those stupid and illogical things that terrestrial females do.»
He glanced at her and shook his head.
«I must only learn. I don’t want you to change because of me.»
Sema was speechless. That sentence was full of acceptance. She was able to perceive the love Red was holding for her. She wanted to reciprocate it, but she felt with absolute certainty that it has been too early. Her cycle of falling in love was not yet completed. Maybe still one year. Maybe two. And if Red wouldn't be gotten tired of her and of her alien timing, he would be repaid also spiritually, not only with physical love.
She decided that sex would been the only way, for the moment, in which she could feel closer to him. The simple idea of losing him had inspired her an irrational and deep fear. The feeling had been so unbearably painful to make her considering the option to end the whole relationship. A Morassian would understand her. A Morassian would wait for her. Because also for him the process would be a slow one, like a stone blazing hot in the sun. But an Earthling?
The critical moment had passed and the option had been cancelled from the list of chances. It was illogical: she was falling in love, he was already loving her, it would be like having discovered a treasure of gold and throwing it away only because someone can’t realize the true value.
«I go upstairs and I wait for you in our room. Be ready for a good Shenk and…» she had murmured.
He put a finger on her lips.
«I’m going to take something to drink in the kitchen. And then I’ll reach you. With you I learned to wait. I can learn all the rest too. I love you.»
The sentence shook her. She felt a thrill and was more than sure he had felt her desire of total union.
She turned, almost dancing, to regain her room, with the light paces of her long muscular legs. But halfway the ramp of stairs that were bringing to the first floor, she had heard the sound of voices in the absolute silence of the night. She had retraced on her steps and got closer to the kitchen, the only place still enlighted.
Her mother and Red were talking in Standard English.
«I didn’t expect to find you still awake, mrs Harna» the Earthling said.
«Oh, I am only putting in order the last things, mr Stone» her mother answered.
She heard a slight sigh.
Then his voice was more decise, after a long pause.
«Madam, I know you saw me, before. I am sorry. I am still learning your traditions. I didn’t want to be direspecteful to you or to Sema.»
«You’ve been, instead» her mother answered in a neutral tone «But I think I’ll have to get accustomed if the relationship between you and my daughter should continue.»
«It will. And I will learn. I love Sema.»
«You’re full of good will, Stone. Your love is greater than the lack of respect for Moras formal traditions. I accepted you in this home only because I read it in your eyes and in every gesture toward Sema. Even in those unrespectful and illogical ones like those happened this evening.»
«I’d take a bullet for Sema.»
«This is not logical, mr Stone, but it’s very beautiful.»
«Are you sure I am illogical?»
«I don’t understand why you want to be killed in place of my daughter. We aren’t in a extreme situation.»
«However is what I would do, mrs Harna, if a life or death situation would endanger Sema. And it’s very logical to protect the one you love. Even at cost of my own life.»
A long and embarrassing silence followed.
The her mother spoke again.
«Yes. You would really do it. You’re at a level, in your relationship, that for us is reachable only after a long path. Will you be able to wait for so long?»
«I know it's worth. After all, mrs Harna, I just said that I would give my life to save Sema’s one. Isn’t it logical, then, that if I am willing to make such a great sacrifice I can afford a smaller one like waiting for your daughter making her path with her timing?» Red answered with sweetness.
«This is very logical, And it shows acceptance of our culture, in some way. I think that now you should make sex with Sema. Sex makes even us Morassians closer each other. And if you learned the meditation of the Shenk, thing not very easy for you Earthlings, maybe you have some chances of success.»
Sema’s mother did a pause.
«You’re a good person, mr Stone. Despite the fact that you’re disordinate and illogical in your manifestations. But we have both to learn from our cultures. I liked to have you here. Oh… are you embarrassed?»
«If I have to tell all the truth… yes I am!»
«Because I invited you to have sex with my daughter?»
«Yes. It’s a thing that no terrestrial mother would ever said.»
«And why?» her mother answered amused.
«Because no terrestrial parent would ever encourage the fiancé of their own daughter to have sex with her!» Stone exclaimed giggling.
«But it’s illogical! You are attracted by each other, aren’t you?»
«True.»
«And when you make it you feel closer, in harmony, with each other, don’t you?»
«Well… yes, it’s again true.»
«Why do you see it as a perversion, then? If making sex makes you both happy and closer, and maybe could accelerate the Sema’s process of falling in love, what’s the problem?»
«Only different mentalities, mrs Harna. And you’re right. That’s why I look for Sema with my eyes, with my body, with my mind and with my heart. To stay with her, to feel her inside me and to know that I am inside her.»
«This is logical. This is the path of the Shenk. But Stone, you should always remember this: never force her. Listen to her. Learn patience. And understand Sema’s morassian nature. Inside us there’s much more than the pure logic.»
«I will always try to do it, mrs Harna.»
«May The Creator help you, Earthling.»
The pause of silence had been interrupted by the noise of Red opening the fridge. Sema had moved in silence, reached the stairs and sneaked inside her room.
When Red had arrived, the Shenk had lasted very little, while the sex had been slow, extenuating and extremely satisfactory. They had made love for half of the night.
Sema sighed. The conversation between Red and her mother Yma had revealed her a lot of the way Red saw and felt. It was all so different from a Morassian. So intense to the point of seeming not durable, like certain supernovas that condensed the activity of billions of years in a handful of seconds, producing the brightest light, to go out immediately after in an unnamed darkness.
Red’s intense love made her feeling inadequate, because she couldn’t repay him in the same way. And she had no intention to force her timing and her biology.
She realized she couldn't sleep anymore. She looked the time and saw that twenty-four hours has passed since they left Moras. Within further fifty-two they would touch the plasticement of New York spaceport. She felt the need to make something, but she would have disturbed Red, who was sleeping soundly.
She wore a gym clothes and training shoes. She fastened them and the laces adjusted automatically, calibrated on previous fastenings by shape memory polymers.
She silently went out on the corridor. The local starship time indicated three o’clock in the morning and there was nobody around.
She knew that one of the bar on each deck was always opened. She rapidly touched one of the screen on the wall and a map appeared, with the indication of the available services. On the corridor floor glowed an indicator and on the screen the instruction to follow the signal.
As Sema moved, the indicator begun to precede her, slowing down if she slowed down, and accelerating if she accelerate, showing her the way.
When she was in front of the empty bar, the indicator shut off and a hologram appeared taking the shape of a Morassian and asking in her language if she would be able to find the way back to the her room.
Sema answered that she could make it on her own.
The hologram shut off and she entered the place.
«Do you know how to make morassian cocktails?» she asked to the barman. Then she realized she was talking to an android with terrestrial appearance.
«Of course, madam» it answered in Standard English the android-barman «Which one do you want?»
«A Tavu-Kolin» Sema ordered «But without lemmas leaves.»
«Ah, you don’t like the sour taste. It will be ready in three minutes. Are you paying with the card?»
«I have an all-included ticket» and she gave the name and cabin number.
Half second later the android-barman nodded.
«I connected to the system of this starship. Enabled. Cocktail incoming, a tasty and relaxing Tavu-Kolin. In the meanwhile, if you wish, you can watch news channel or entertainment programs, pre-recorded before leaving Moras.
«Thank you. Could you bring me the drink to that sofa?» the Morassian answered.
«Od course, Madam! Please, have a seat, miss Harna.»
Sema sat on a corner sofa, in front of the screen of a terminal.
Automatically a 3D menu materialized above the right armrest. She scrolled the programs: little fluctuant icons in the air that could be manipulated like real objects. It was like catching dices in a hat. You could take them and on the faces of the you could see the program preview.
Her attention was caught by a news program, the on line version of the Daily Federal.
For a short instant Allen Stewart’s face had appeared.
She took the icon and made the gesture of launching it toward the big screen, which turned on showing the program.
«Her Tavu-Kolin, madam.»
The voice of the android-barman made her to jump.
The machine was bowed with the tray in the hand and on the top of it was towering a glass filled with a color-shifting liquid decorated with the grains of an aromatic plant of Moras.
She sniffed the strong scent of mint and one of a not well identifiable orange-citrus.
«Thank you» Sema answered taking the glass.
The android went away an she kept watching the news.
The newscast had been received by subspace distortion while the Princess of Moras was orbiting around the planet and the dated back to three days before, Earth Time.
Sema drank a sip and felt her head spinning. The alcohol contained in the drink, mixed with the aromatic herbs, had an immediate effect. Her musculature relaxed but the sleep was still far.
Then she stared at the screen, the eyes wide open.
Allen Stewart’s face had appeared in the news. She increased the audio. Beside the face of the former MCCIB Director there was another one. A caucasian face crowned by blonde hair, faded blue eyes, sharp nose and thin lips. The man was dressed in formal and irreproachable way, so classic to result almost antiquate.
The voice of the anchorman running the newscast kept talking and Sema caught the words like in a hallucination:
Former MCCIB Director Allen Stewart, protagonist of the clamorous inquiry on the crimes perpetrated by the billionaire Herbert Hillman, mysteriously vanished seven months ago from his texan villa of Mentone, has confirmed to have accepted the assignment as Special Advisor of the President of the Federation. It will be replaced at the head of the important bureau of military investigation by Harvey Bennett, the director of the MCCIB office in London.
Sema drank a big sip of Tavu-Kolin and reset all her thoughts in her mind. She knew with certainty that she wouldn’t sleep even if she had drunk a whole bathtub of that strong cocktail.
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