Page 92 of Married to the All Hallows' Eve Alien

"Isn't that against the rules or something?"

"Only in the GC court if you're making a formal presentation," he says, ushering me out the door.

Forty-One

Sem

As Ivy and I walk back to my quarters, we pass a few other officers who congratulate us and wish us many daughters. Without thinking, they use Alliance, and Ivy asks me what they've said after everyone, but to be fair to her, they all did use slightly different ways to express themselves.

Once we reach my quarters, we enter, and I find my spare Dulu holo. I open my computer, and I change the settings. Then I place it over her neck and ask for the computer in the room to produce a full-length mirror.

I look at Ivy now as an Alliance woman. She has long, straight black hair, as a maximum class Alliance woman would have, and grey skin. In the Alliance dress she was married in, she looks completely authentic. She stands up, mesmerized by her reflection, and says, "Oh my god." I watch her as she gets closer to the mirror as if she can't believe what she's seeing.

I stand behind her, so in the reflection, she sees us how others would see us as an Alliance couple of maximum class, nothing more.

"We look…" she begins.

"Like Alliance people."

"Would no one really notice?"

"As long as you kept that Dulu holo hidden, no one would suspect. And as long as you just stood still and said nothing and were within the Empire."

"Why are there no Alliance women here?"

"They don't leave the Empire," I hold up my hand to stop her from interjecting with an assumption. "They don't want to. They value men's lives less since we can't reproduce and there are more men than women, so they send us out into the dangerous galaxy to do their bidding. It's the way it has always been."

"No women leave?"

"There are exceptions, of course; you'll learn in the Empire there are always exceptions, but for the majority of women, no."

"So if I wore this to the nearest station, people might assume I'm an exception?"

"Until they talked to you and realized you didn't have the credentials to be an exception."

"Could you get me those?"

I'm stunned. I didn't see this going this way. "You want to go to a station and pretend to be an Alliance woman?"

She turns around and looks up at me. She looks so Alliance now. I'm having a bit of a shock, similar but much less than she must have felt because I know humans exist. She didn't know aliens existed.

"Yes. From what I've heard, it's the safest way for a human to go anywhere in the galaxy."

"You want to go out in the galaxy?"

"Yes. We can do that, right?"

"I thought you wanted to go home back to New Orleans?"

"I want that too. But looking at myself now, like this, knowing I wouldn't be a target for abduction, I'm curious."

"There are some nearby space stations," I say. "Earth is far away from most civilizations, which is what kept humanity safe for so long. But there are some semi-interesting places we could go to when I have leave. But we'd have to keep this a secret." I don’t mention that I’m personally forbidden to be with an Alliance woman by law. That might just be confusing now.

"You said it wasn't breaking the law."

"It's not for you, but there are many unwritten laws in the galaxy, and this is something, as far as I know, an Alliance woman has never done. Perhaps if we say you were from Reima Two."

"What's Reima Two?"

---