The Wiles & Guiles
by Susan Strict
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2005 Susan Strict
Published by Strict Publishing International
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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The wiles and guiles that women work,
Dissembled with an outward show,
The tricks and toys that in them lurk,
The cock that treads them shall not know.
Have you not heard it said full oft,
A woman’s nay doth stand for nought?
quotation from a sonnet by William Shakespeare
The Invasion
It took three years before the Guardians would give their approval, and by that time the first fleet was three-fifths of its way to Earth.
She stood in front of the viewing window wondering whether she had chosen the best Earth name for herself. Of course it would be inappropriate for her, as Leader, to use her given name even if Earth men could pronounce it, but not being completely sure of all the possible connotations of names on Earth she idly wondered whether “Susan” had any hidden meanings of which she was unaware.
The information was so sketchy about Earth. It had been picked as a first choice because the faint distant transmissions confirmed that it had intelligent life, and all the indications were that it was similar and possibly compatible to their own. As they drew closer although still many light-years away, and as their experience in reading and interpreting the transmissions became better, details of Earth life became clearer and, in particular, evidence that the dominant species on that planet appeared and acted almost identically to themselves.
Finally, when detailed pictures of many human habits and pastimes could be viewed, the Guardians gave their judgement that to mate with human males would not be a perversion.
There was great excitement, and many eagerly crowded round onboard screens to get their first view of human males. The excitement proved too much for many, and the Guardians worked overtime to prevent and punish perverted acts among the hundreds on each spacecraft.
There was much to do. First and foremost, everyone needed to learn the Earth language, and it was with some disquiet that it was discovered there was not a common language among humans. Decisions had to be made rapidly about how many of the spacecraft would be landing on each area of the Earth, and observations needed to be rapidly compiled about centres of population and whether there were any relevant migration habits to be taken into account. It was as well there still remained many months in space, for as well as the languages there was a great deal of information to be interpreted and learned by all about human customs. Remarkably similar as they were, there were fundamental differences that if ignored could mean failure of the entire mission. Everyone had to be properly briefed.
‘So,’ thought Susan, ‘Men for each of the Citizens.’
It was not a happy thought, because as a Leader she was forbidden to mate. She had accepted the job when it was shown her genetic makeup was undoubtedly that of a Leader, only doing so in the expectation that mating would in any case prove to be an impossibility for anyone. Inside, she felt the same as any of them. Within her there was as much desperation to mate as there was in any Chooser or Citizen, although now she was Leader the Choosers would not allow it. She knew only too well that any deviation would be severely punished by the Guardians, even if she were able to find a way to do it without a Chooser’s approval.
‘Yet,’ she thought, ‘Perhaps it will not be such a loss. The humans, it appears, are smaller and much weaker than we are. We know only a little of their mating habits, and they may simply refuse the mating even once selected by the Choosers. We, too, may be incompatible. If our chemistry cannot sustain the human male for the mating period, then any pleasure will be fleeting and pointless.’
One of the scientists dropped the bombshell when they were less than a light-year from Earth. Human life was carbon-based, not silicon. It seemed the end of their dreams.
It took six hours for further information to be gathered and analysed. True, humans’ cell structure was from carbon, but in all other respects they were exactly the same. Even the rest of their chemistry was similar, so similar that although any possibility of cross-infection by any type of virus or bacteria was negligible, reaction to poisons, pain, enzymes and other chemicals would be identical even if the degree of the reaction was not yet known. Mating would almost certainly be possible, and from the information now available it appeared that it would be both successful and highly pleasurable. There was no need to find another destination.
Now relatively close to Earth, the fleet took steps to avoid being seen. Humans, they now knew, were a warlike species, and quite likely to attack before asking questions if confronted with thousands of spacecraft heading straight for their planet. Each spaceship took on a silvery pink appearance to any observer within a few miles of it. From further afield, however, it would now be almost completely invisible to both natural light and any other sensor as the electromagnetic waves, including those within the visible frequency, were split and dissipated in random directions. Unless watchers were able to measure space displacement, the whole fleet could be virtually on their doorstep completely undetected.
Finally they arrived, slowed, took last-minute readings, and began the slow descent through the Earth’s atmosphere.
The Landing
Millions of people watched the fleet of bright pink cylinders as they crossed the sky that evening.
No one who saw them had any doubt they were from another planet, and there was a certain amount of panic from both the general public and the military. So many vessels could only mean one thing: an invasion.
Unseen by most, they swooped low over the Sahara Desert before breaking into smaller groups and heading in various directions towards the centres of population. As they crossed some countries they were fired on, but dodged the missiles easily and continued to their individual destinations. Finally, they landed.
Governments had grounded civilian flights immediately the alien fleet had been spotted. Now only military aircraft were in the air, yet taking care not to approach the large groups of alien craft too closely. Armed forces were mobilised as rapidly as was possible, but although the landing of the aliens had been completed well before midnight, there was no movement from the strange pink cylinders.
It was 5am before anything happened. Although most people had remained glued to their television sets all night they still missed it, because a complete media blackout had been imposed, in the UK at least, by the worried government. The opening of the first craft and the emergence of the first known extraterrestrial on Earth’s soil went totally unrecorded - for fear that any photographic equipment might be interpreted as some sort of weapons.
They stepped from the spacecraft. Five of them at first, and looked around as if surprised at the lack of activity anywhere near them.
To all the watchers’ great relief none of these five aliens appeared to be carrying weapons, nor were they multi-headed green lumps of slime. They appeared, in fact, to be positively human, or at least humanoid. They wore shiny, pink, close-fitting spacesuits but without any sort of helmet. Their hair was long and straight. And they were all, apparently, female.
The group of military and government officials who walked out to meet them did so with some considerable nervousness, but they need not have worried. At close quarters the aliens appeared no less human, even though they were somewhat larger than the average human and the shortest of these first five must have been over six-foot tall. Also, despite their size, by any human standards they were stunningly beautiful, so much so that every man in the human group meeting them felt a deep attraction to each and every one of them as they drew nearer.
It was only two hours before the first television broadcast was made to the whole world. It was a scoop for the BBC, and official sources estimated that nearly a billion people watched the broadcast from the hastily constructed studio close to the aliens’ landing ground just outside London.
The Prime Minister waffled first, of course, then one of the alien women stood up to speak. She towered over the Prime Minister. He sat down, looking somewhat flushed.
“We have travelled for five years,” she announced. “We spotted your planet many years ago, but we were not able to make contact with you. During our voyage we have had much time to study you, and I am delighted to say that you are exactly what we hoped for.
“Let me tell you a little about us,” she continued. “We are much the same as you, but not quite. There are a few differences, some of which I will tell you and others that may become apparent in time. They are not important for you or for us.”
Her audience was silent, spellbound. She seemed to emanate a presence that captivated all who watched both in the studio and on television.
“Our home is similar to your planet and our sun is much like your sun. Our world orbits our sun in three hundred and seventy days, and rotates once every twenty-five hours. Plants and animals similar in appearance to yours have evolved, and we ourselves look not too dissimilar to you. There is one big difference, and it is difference that will mean we cannot stay here for more than a few years at the most because of the impossibility of producing sufficient quantities of the food we require. Life on our planet, including we ourselves, is based around silicon and not carbon as your plants and animals are composed. Strangely, as it may appear later when I talk of the purpose of our visit, we cannot consume anything that grows here and we shall be hard pressed to manufacture enough sustenance to survive and for our return trip - and we must return.”
In the silence, the disappointment from everyone watching was almost audible.
“The reasons for our visit to you, and the need to come in such numbers, are simple, but the causes behind them are complex. Believe me, we would not have spent five years coming here, perhaps two years on your planet, and another five years travelling back if we did not have compelling reasons for it.
Our technology has advanced in some areas a great distance beyond yours, yet lags behind in others. For example, when I tell you that our journey was of over ten light years and I have already told you we travelled for five years, you will see that some matters you may consider to be impossible have been resolved by our scientists.
But we made a mistake, and it is that mistake brings us here. I need not bother you with the details and I am sure you do not want to hear them. Enough to say that an experiment in genetic engineering released a toxin that killed every man and boy on our planet fifteen years ago. Only women remain.
“We have tried everything, even cloning. By some quirk of nature this will not work, or perhaps our technology in that area is insufficiently advanced.
“In short, unless we can find some way of producing children, and quickly while we are still young enough, our race will die.
“This brings us here. It was a faint hope, and we know of no other similar lifeforms to us within four hundred light years of our planet. Now we have studied you as we approached you, we are completely sure. With all the differences between carbon and silicon life structures, there is an underlying compatibility for procreation: you can give us the children we so badly need. Equally importantly, we are now certain the disease that killed our men and any other diseases we may carry cannot affect carbon-based life like you. You are safe, and through you is our survival.
“I do not pretend this is simple. If it were a simple matter of artificial insemination then my task would be an easy one. Again, our differences make that impossible. In order for us to conceive, as we each must do for our race to survive, we must mate with your men.
“We know this may be too much to ask, and if you refuse us we will go away and our race will perish. We only hope that our outward differences will not make us so distasteful to your men that the mating will be impossible.”
She stopped talking and sat down.
There was absolute silence for over a minute, and then there was total uproar.
The Prime Minister rose shakily and held up his hands for quiet. It took over fifteen minutes for the audience in the studio to settle sufficiently for him to make himself heard.
“My friends, “ he said. “Citizens of the Earth, it is my opinion, and the opinion of all the world leaders I have spoken to in the last two hours, that we should help all we can. We have been presented with a unique opportunity, not just to save a whole race of people but also to send with them a part of ourselves to the furthest corners of the galaxy. If we can successfully do as they wish, we shall be creating a new race, and new species that will carry our human genes to new worlds.
“We shall, of course, take a number of precautions, and firstly we have already agreed for the next fourteen days that the landing areas of our new friends will be completely segregated while further discussion takes place and while our scientists examine any potential problems.
“This is indeed a momentous day. I hope the human race can rise to the occasion.”
No one, either then or afterwards, questioned whether the humour in his last sentence was intentional.
The Chooser
Alf Smith was the first.
It was unexpected, unplanned, and long before the fourteen days’ segregation had passed.
Alf Smith was no one special. He was, in fact, a soldier, an ordinary squaddie who, among a few thousand others, had been given the uncomfortable duty of patrolling the segregation boundary and maintaining security.
He had missed the television broadcast, having been on duty at the time. Like everyone else, he had, of course, seen the repeated highlights on every news broadcast the next day, as well as the pictures in the newspaper.
Alf, like so many other men, had joked with his friends about whether he would have the chance to mate with these amazing creatures. There was something about them that made them incredibly attractive and exciting, even allowing for their size.
“Not me,” Alf had said. “No chance.”
“’Course you would,” one of his friends had said, “You’d be there like a rat up a drainpipe, given half a chance. From what I hear, there’s over a million of them altogether in all them spaceships, and millions more on their way!”
Alf shook his head sadly. “I’d be so lucky,” he said cynically.
It was two days after the landing that Alf was patrolling the stretch of woodland half a mile from the spacecraft when he heard the voice.
“I choose you,” it said. It was a soft, woman’s voice.
Alf clicked off the safety catch on his rifle and whirled round looking for the source of the voice. This area was strictly out of bounds to all but the military.
“Who’s there?” he demanded loudly.
A woman glided towards him between the trees. A tall woman. A very tall woman.
“Now you stop right there,” said Alf determinedly, recognising that this must be one of the aliens and waving the barrel of his rifle in her direction. His instructions dealt mostly with the likelihood of the Press or members of the public trying to get close to the aliens, and somehow everyone seemed to have forgotten to allow for the possibility that these beautiful females might decide to go where they were not supposed to be.
She slowed, but did not stop coming towards him.
“I choose you,” she said again.
“Look, Ma’am,” said Alf, lowering his rifle. “I ain’t supposed to let no one wander about round here. You’d best get back to your spaceship right pronto before one of us gets into trouble.”
He stared at her. It was impossible not to. Her long flowing hair waved and bounced as she walked. Her body seemed to exude sexuality. Her hips were wide, yet not out of proportion. Her breasts were large, yet neither over-large nor anything other than perfectly suited to her perfect form. Her shoulders were broad and strong, but feminine and attractive. She flowed rather than moved, her tight one-piece suit showing every movement of her body. And now she was beside him.
She held out her hand to him. In a daze he took it in his.
“Come with me,” she asked softly.
“Where?”
“We must make love,” she said. “I choose you. I am a Chooser. I am ready now.”
She led him back the way she came, towards the nearest space ship. He did not resist her.
* * * * *
Three days after Alf Smith’s disappearance, the army commander was still using all his spare manpower in the search. There was absolutely no possibility, he believed, that Alf could have completely left the area because the perimeter was quite possibly the most secure ever created by any military force anywhere.
Alf was not in any of the wooded areas inside the perimeter. He was not in any of the grassland.
That left only the area where the spacecraft themselves were parked. The commander reached for the telephone to call the Prime Minister.
* * * * *
“I’m sorry to bother you,” the Prime Minister told the leader of the aliens, with some embarrassment. “We seem to have mislaid one of our soldiers and I wondered whether you’d be so kind as to check the area around your spacecraft.”
“No need,” she replied. “If you mean Alf, he’s with us.”
“With you? Please explain. And when can we have him back?”
The Prime Minister tried to sound both diplomatic and businesslike, but was well aware he had just succeeded in sounding like a confused child trying to ask for his ball back.
“He has been chosen. He will be another three days at least. Then you will have to give him the customary twenty-five days rest and recuperation.”
“I’m sorry,” the Prime Minister blustered somewhat. “That’s really not good enough. What do you mean ‘chosen’? You cannot simply hold one of our men. It’s just not done.”
She shrugged. “I too am sorry,” she said, “It was not my wish to start anything before your fourteen days had expired, but it has happened. The mating has started. It must finish. It is out of my control now.”
The Prime Minister appeared exasperated. “You’re not making sense,” he said, in his frustration forgetting any attempt at diplomacy. “All right, I understand that one of our soldiers has been with one of your women. If that’s happened before we had checked all the safety issues for you and us, so be it. We can’t do anything about that now. But what’s all this ‘another three days’? You cannot simply hold him for, what will it be, six whole days?!”
The alien’s face took on the expression of a parent trying to explain the facts of life to a small child.
“The mating has not finished, of course. He must pass his seed to her at least once an hour for the full six days.”
The Prime Minister looked horrified. “Once an hour for six days! I don’t think... that’s just not possible! No man could do that.”
She nodded. “It is true,” she said, “That your men are not as virile as ours were, and they are considerably smaller and weaker. All the same, we are confident you can manage it. It may be that afterwards you will need more than the usual twenty-five days recovery period.”
“Completely impossible!” said the Prime Minister.
She shrugged. “Then we are doomed,” she said simply.
Alf Smith
In a daze, Alf allowed himself to be led by the woman towards her spaceship. Only as they started up the ramp towards the open hatch did he pull back.
“I can’t,” he said. “It’s against orders. I shouldn’t be here.”
She turned towards him still holding his hand and standing only a few inches in front of him. His face was only a fraction above the level of her breasts. The pink, shiny material of her suit brushed his cheek as she turned, and he felt the soft resilience of her flesh underneath. She leaned towards him until she pressed gently against him.
“Of course you don’t have to if you don’t want to,” she said, “But if you don’t then I won’t be choosing you again, and neither will any of the others. This is your one and only opportunity.”
She turned, holding his hand more loosely and giving him every opportunity to pull away. He followed her meekly into the spacecraft.
Her cabin was uncluttered, with a bed in the very centre. There were no bedclothes on the bed, just a padded covering of a soft, black shiny material. She let go of his hand and stood next to the bed, facing him. She slowly pulled open the front of her suit until it was at waist level and the fleshy curves of her breasts were clearly visible and seemed to swell outwards as if straining for the completion of their release.
“Take your clothes off,” she said softly, standing with her hands on her hips, a pose that seemed to accentuate her figure.
He undressed.
“Come here.” She had not yet opened her suit any further, nor exposed any more of her body. He was completely naked. He went to her, and she put her hands on his shoulders, looking down at him.
“I see,” she said, “You do not find me to be a repellent alien.” Her eyes were focused on his groin. He could not find the words to reply.
“Undress me,” she asked.
His trembling fingers found the edges of the already half-open suit fastened, it appeared, simply by pressing the overlapping edges together down her front and under her. He pulled, and the remaining fastening came apart easily. She shook her shoulders and the pink suit fell round her ankles. She wore nothing beneath it. She stepped out of it.
“Are you ready?” she asked. “Are you prepared? Because you know that once we start we cannot stop until we finish.”
He did not understand the significance of her words. He nodded, and once again let her take his hand and gently pull him on top of her as she lay back on the bed.
She murmured in his ear, “Remember I am not quite the same as human women. Don’t be surprised...”
At that moment she was, to him, exactly the same as a human woman, only more beautiful and more exciting. Her skin was warm, resilient, soft and enticing, not quite the same as human skin, stronger, more flexible. Her body was firm, yet voluptuous. Nowhere was there any fat or flab on her, and her considerably larger size than most human women only served to excite him more.
As his hardness touched her between her legs, he felt a movement from her where he touched. She sensed his surprise.
“Not the same,” she whispered, “Better.”
Her skin seemed to be swelling out from inside her, making a perfect cavity for him. Automatically, he moved his hips forward, and as he did he felt her flesh encircle the end of his hardness. Her skin continued to swell outwards, forming a fleshy tube encasing right up his hardness tightly, squeezing yet not uncomfortable. She put her arms round him, pulling him to her, and as she did he felt the fleshiness hesitate before stretching itself round and over his scrotum and forming a tight, strong ring completely enclosing his genitals. A slight tingling ran up and down the length of his encased member.
To his shock and concern, the whole fleshy tube then started to withdraw into her without loosening its grip on him, and taking him with it. It stopped as his groin pressed hard against hers.
The tingling increased, and at the same time pulses of muscle movement started to flow through the tube holding him. The feeling was unlike anything he had ever experienced. He could not have described the sensations he felt. The warmth and the contours of her body against him, under him, were at least as exciting as the movements within that tube, yet it was the movements of the tube that drove him unbelievably quickly towards his climax.
She gasped and moaned softly, as clearly she experienced deep pleasure too.
It was only a few seconds before he exploded, gasping, into her in the most intense orgasm he had ever experienced.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped.
“Why are you sorry?” she whispered.
“For doing it so quickly. You are so exciting, so beautiful, and that... “ He could not find words for the intensity of the physical sensations.
“It does not matter,” she said. “There is plenty of time, but you must be so careful not to over-tire yourself. I am so pleased to feel that my enzymes do work on humans too.”
“What?”
She made no reply, as at that moment her eyes closed, her breathing became faster and she was moaning with what was clearly intense pleasure.
He felt the muscular pulses and contractions increase as she neared her climax, and realised, shocked, that he was still hard – and totally, rigidly hard as if pushing back at the fleshy tube that squeezed at him. The tingling had increased, and there was a deep, active warmth in his testicles.
Her body bucked and writhed, taking him with her as she squirmed across the bed in the ecstasy of long-awaited orgasm. He felt a moment’s pain as the fleshy tube tightened and constricted his hardness and his testicles, but in an instant it returned to its former comfortable tightness. The muscle pulses slowed to a flutter, but did not stop.
She lay still, panting.
“Enzymes?” he demanded.