Wesley Britton's Blog - Posts Tagged "the-beta-earth-chronicles"

Blind Author Announces Double Promotion of Unique Sci Fi Series

This month, BearManor Media publications is plugging their Beta-Earth Chronicles by promoting two of the volumes simultaneously. On August 1, the fourth volume in Wesley Britton’s inventive series, A Throne for an Alien, was published. At the same time, last year’s debut novel, The Blind Alien, was made available for 99 cents.

Author Wesley Britton, blind due to a genetic disease, says, “The original concept came to me when I asked one question. What would happen to an ordinary man who is dragged to an alternate universe and blinded in the capture? How can anyone cope with a parallel earth where they don’t understand a single word they hear while not being able to see anything or anyone they encounter?”

The depth of the stories is perhaps best summarized by Raymond Benson, author of seven official James Bond novels. “The Blind Alien is a story with a highly original concept, fascinating characters, and not-too-subtle but truthful allegories. Don’t let the sci-fi label or alternate Earth setting fool you--this is a compelling and contemporarily relevant story about race, sex, and social classes.” “It’s a story,” Tosin Coker, the U.K.’s first black female SF novelist adds, “of rebellion, politics, love, science, and religion . . . that’s both entertaining and very thought provoking.”

“Judging from all the reviews at Amazon and Goodreads,” Britton says, “readers are especially intrigued by both the style and substance of the books, especially the language and grammar that keep reminding readers they’re on a completely different planet.”

To date, the series includes The Blind Alien, The Blood of Balnakin, When War Returns, and now A Throne for an Alien. Book five, The Third Earth, is currently in production. “The sixth book is about 110 pages done,” Britton says. “It will all end here on our earth, but expect major surprises regarding our future.”

Media Contact: Ben Ohmart
BOOKS@BENOHMART.COM

Series Website and Author Contact Information:
https://drwesleybritton.com/

Earlier this week, I posted the opening passages of A Throne for an Alien for you. Today, I’m offering the opening for The Blind Alien, the first book in the Beta-Earth Chronicles. (Remember, it’s only 99 cents this month.) Let me know what you think!

Bar: True said, I was raised not to do the things I have done. None like me expect to see the things I have seen. Deep in my womb, I still fear to share
my memories of the shakings of two earths. Deep in my womb, I would prefer to keep our private memories within our tribe. But the lies, the distortions
rage on. So our skolings begin.
For my part, in 5 of 1720, in the 24th year of my being, I had honored to complete my training at Stadsem Wostra for Independent Literates. As I was an
orphaned blue-skin with no family linkages, my Brown Shapers had determined I was marriageable. This possibled, they told me, only if I became skilled
enough to secure a position where my talents could be shown at their best advantage. Still, I stunned when I was told to report to Director-Shaprim Uneld
Kharg at the Central Science Institute in Bergarten just hours after collecting my certificates. I had expected not my first assignment to be in such an
important place, in the middle of the capital of Balnakin. Few blues worked at such Institutes, at least in the mid-level positions. This was no mere task
as a scribe assisting some Brown Master. Instead, this was a call to go to the core of my country.
I doubt anyone, in those days, could go to the great Bergarten Institutional Collective without feeling awe at what had been built there. As a blue slave,
all my life I'd been accustomed to tight, functional four-square buildings that were clean, mobile, ecologically sound. All my nights had been spent in
cramped sleeping slots where six, seven, eight girls shared space waiting the results of our tests and how they met the needs of our exacting masters.
Now, on this day while I walked through Bergarten for the first time, I stared skyward at the immense round structures of stone and crystal. They were
all spacious, permanent, imposingly beautiful. True said, Bergarten architecture had not the dignity or aged looks of similar cities across the Philosea
on the Old Continent. There, wooden stack-modules showed every human where civilization had begun. here In Bergarten, the awe was in the size of the smooth
walls that cried power and grandeur. Here, there were no age cracks in the stones. Here, the rounded Sojoa-sheets bulging from each window, drawing power from Our God reflecting light and energy, seemed to say without words — "Here grows the future."
Entering my assigned building through the back arches for Blue Professionals, I surprised even more when the Security Op looked at my papers, scanned my
travel-satchel, and then personally escorted me to the sixth level. I certained I was in some trouble — why would any Brown escort a mere applicant through
an easy, if winding maze? More amazing, waiting not, she marched me into a long room where four dignified Browns sat behind a thick, long shining frost-white
desk full of skols and skol-books. Bright without shadows, this room was lit by a long, wall-to-wall Sojoa-sheet pulsating with energy behind the Shaper's
table. The other walls were mellow, white-spine wood connected by plush, silenting brown-rope carpet. Everything was polished, new, a place of importance.
Walking to the table, I marked that all four women wore the short-hair and bare ear shells of females who'd never bonded by choice or had been found unsuitable.
None were young. Considering where they sat, I presumed all four were there by choice and lacked not in solid tribal Alliances. I could see not their tunics
with their tribal sewings on their breasts because of the piles of skols on the table. I kept my eyes proper low and looked not at the faces contemplating
my future.
At first, the committee talked among themselves and ignored me in the customary way important Shaprims and Maprims always deal with blues in their presence.
Then, with no introductions, the four went quiet and the eldest Brown in the middle, the taut, long-armed woman who I knew must be Shaprim Kharg, sat back
and studied me. With a face full of doubt and disapproval, she looked like an old monument, crows-feet crowding the skin above her cheeks. "Give ear!"
she commanded sharp. "Come child." I walked forward. "Turn and show," she ordered. I spun the proper slow turn for the group. I ended with my head kneeled
with the gesture of open palms to show my deference. "Speak child," she commanded. "Say anything. Let us hear your voice." Puzzled, I recited my gratitude
greeting, staring at my open hands. Shaprim Kharg barked for me to stop. It was so hard for me to avert my eyes, so intense was her stare. I focused on
her thick face muscles which made her words seem like sounds coming from a dark machine.
"Think you," she asked, turning her head to the long-cheeked graying Brown to her right, "our guest will like this fleshy Bar Tine?" Gazing at me with
sad eyes, The second Shaprim measured me as if choosing house ornaments. She sounded neutral as she shrugged, "Who can tell? Tine carries the bearing of
innocence. As non-threatening as we could ask." These notions were strange to hear. But I said nothing as I awaited my first assignment.

If you were to look over all the reviews posted at Goodreads and Amazon for the first four books of the Beta-Earth Chronicles, you’d see readers are surprised and often impressed with the original storytelling style. More than a few readers say they’ve never read anything like these books before.

I’m delighted to read such responses. After all, I went to considerable effort to create “Beta-speak,” for lack of a better term for that world’s dialect. Perhaps you’re wondering what that means and how the unusual syntax and grammar of Beta-Earth was created.

Well, here’s a very short sample illustrating what I’m talking about:

True said, I was raised not to do the things I have done. None like me expect to see the things I have seen. Deep in my womb, I still fear to share
my memories of the shakings of two earths. Deep in my womb, I would prefer to keep our private memories within our tribe. But the lies, the distortions
rage on. So our skolings begin.
For my part, in 5 of 1720, in the 24th year of my being, I had honored to complete my training at Stadsem Wostra for Independent Literates. As I was an
orphaned blue-skin with no family linkages, my Brown Shapers had determined I was marriageable. This possibled, they told me, only if I became skilled
enough to secure a position where my talents could be shown at their best advantage. Still, I stunned when I was told to report to Director-Shaprim Uneld

When I began drafting The Blind Alien, one of my first thoughts was that sci fi, almost by definition, requires strange new terminology. Authors need new nouns for people, places, things. I wondered what else I could do to make it clear my narrators were from another planet and still be understandable for readers.

The first thing I came up was crunching passive verbs into active ones. Instead of “This was possible,” try “This possibled.” This not only sounds different, it also results in a more active, tighter flow. Many little words like “was” and “had” often disappeared.

I played a similar trick with negatives. Instead of “I didn’t care,” try “I cared not.” Again, the phrasing is different sounding. More little words like “did” and “would” are often gone. This too picked up the pace, even though in subtle ways. It’s amazing how such seemingly small things ad up an add up into a distinctive rhythm and beat.

Of course, there were a number of other stylistic choices as well. For me, there were several rewards for these choices. As readers of any of the Beta books know, the stories are told by alternating voices as if you’re reading an oral history with constantly changing narrators. There’s Malcolm Renbourn from our earth. His perspective is shared in very normal American English. His passages are layered in between those of the various Betan speakers who, by the way, I tried to make distinctive from each other. For example, when Lorei and Elsbeth are introduced, I tried to give them a cadence and slightly different level of vocabulary from the previous women in the story. To signal they have a lower level of education, they usually say “I be very uncomfortable, not the proper “am.”

Another unexpected reward, I felt, was that long sections of exposition and description were more interesting when told with this novel use of language. Not only was the setting or character development hopefully engaging on their own merits, but readers would keep turning the pages because they were caught up in the original style.

Well, that’s the short version of the story and doesn’t touch on all the things I tried to do with vocabulary and an invented grammar. But this is just a little blog post which hopefully whets your interest in finding out more in the books themselves. Please let me know if there’s anything you’d like to know more about or if you want to tell me what worked for you and what didn’t.

From the beginning of my Beta-Earth Chronicles project, I knew any success the books might have would depend on reader responses to the characters. Responses to the characters themselves, responses to the relationships they share. These books are all about characters.

So this week, I thought I’d let a number of the women of Beta-Earth introduce themselves to you in their own words. Today, meet Lorei and Elsbeth Cawl as they described themselves in The Blind Alien. I’ll let them do the talking:

(Note: The Caul sisters live in the country of Rhasvi which is north of the slave-holding country of Balnakin. Olos is the goddess of Beta-Earth. “Skoling” means writing.)

Lorei: To begin, I will say I was nearly celebrating my 30th year when my younger sister Elsbeth and I heard the news that a new planet had been discovered,
That an alien-creature was in Balnakin, and that he was blind. I watched for news of him from that day forward. For I too was unsighted.
Before that time, many have said Olos was not kind to my birth-sister or I. Yes, it be true our Mother died when we were but maidens. The father I will
speak of not simply sent his three daughters to the little farmhouse in our forgotten valley to fend for ourselves. He paid the price when his eldest,
the pretty one, the marriageable one, was killed in the fiery trans crash. Had she lived, she'd have been the first wife of some laborer who might have
accepted Elsbeth and myself as his second and third. One to be a plain face to feel shame for. And a blind wife he'd send to an Int-Clin for tube cutting
to ensure no children would carry my infliction. But after the day of my sister's death, the Cawl sisters were deemed unlucky. We were casualties of custom.
We were expected to live our lives in accepting seclusion among those called "The-Quiet-in-the-Land." By custom, we would table only with women. By custom,
we would avoid conversations with men to stir not feelings of jealousy or lust. By custom, we would avoid being with children for the same reasons.

Elsbeth: I be very uncomfortable talking about all these things. But I will tell my story with my sisters. I be the quiet one, and have always been that
way. I be, as husband says, the one who loves with acts and not words. I be listener. So if I seem abrupt or quick, please know I skol not books. I be
gifted not with words.
When I was young, all I knew, and all I needed to know, filled the little square in the nameless valley off the nameless way near the town of Rofvig. My
life was our dirt and the fruits I raised well from it. I felt we had been blessed when father died and we owned our own land. Unlike others, our earth
had been worked so long it was rich, free of heavy stones, and in a basin that collected rain-water.
For me, it was a simple life for a simple maid, a child of Olos who would never know children. The earth was My Mother, so my hands and arms worshipped
the children she gave. I knew the ways of the Mother. I could predict rains and drought by the lightness of dust in my throat. My seed bottles were the
envy of our region. So my sister and I never went without. We had enough to share and barter. Even when province rations were thin, we were self-sufficient.

Lorei: I would have never said so myself, but it was often said I walked with the grace of quiet beauty. I know I did walk with practiced dignity as I
had resolved, long ago, that when neighbors saw this discarded blind woman, they would see that I was as worthy as anyone of trust and respect. When I
was seen, I was oiled nor scented not. But I was clean, fresh, and pleasant to look at. When Elsbeth and I went to the Barter Malls to seek out broken
and defective items to repair, I wanted the stall-brokers to see us as preferred repair women who could take the abandoned objects and work them into desirable
pieces for the selling-shelves. We could not only repair, we could add ornamental glows and luster's, especially with the linen-squares I was known for.
We were simple, yes, but we put pride and care into the work no one else would.

Elsbeth: I hope what I say here hurts no one. But they tell me the Scratchers of Freedom now have new ways. They must always change their ways. It be the
work of freedom.
One eve, when Lorei and I attended the Mid-arc Sharing, my sister listened intently to five people talking about the evils of Balnakin, about the slavery
of light-skins, and how all Rhasvi should open their minds and homes to humans treated as beasts. I saw Lorei's lowered head and knew the gift of Olos
was in my sister. I knew the future was being shaped. Lorei stopped to speak with one of the speakers. Then seven of us quietly spoke together outside
the meeting grounds. I watched my sister and knew from her face she'd decided we should share in the effort of these Scratchers of Freedom, joining those
who spoke not in public but gave their time and energies to help runaway blues. Two of the Scratchers leaders looked at us doubtfully. But it was arranged
they would come visit our home in the valley.

Lorei: I believe there are always ways to reach out to the sufferers of unkindness. Who better than those thought to be among the least gifted? I listened
to the speakers and knew our house had been given purpose. One day, two Scratchers came to us and looked over the valley, our little home, and they deemed
our abode perfect. They offered a plan.
An arc later, a crew of workers came from the Stone Chapel of Mothercare. As a Dome project, they rebuilt our home as a public charity. But when they left,
a new, hidden door was in our new hall storage room. Behind that door were steps to an underground cell with a simple bed, table, piper, Wave-box, a long-box
of provisions. They left with us an unskoled plan.


Beta-Earth website:

https://drwesleybritton.com/

Author contact:

spywise@verizon.net

This week, I began my series of introductions of the main characters in the Beta-Earth Chronicles by having them describe themselves in their own words. So far, you’ve learned a bit about the blue slave, Bar Tine, and the Cawl sisters, Lorei and Elsbeth.

Today, meet the towering exile from the Ice-Countries, Joline Sonam, clearly a favorite of many male readers. Perhaps that’s because she has a healthy libido, perhaps it’s her amazingly long legs. I hope, I hope, I hope readers will find much more to Joline than that, especially her creative and artistic side.

For a quick backstage peek: I admit I had Princess Diana in mind when crafting Joline’s facial features and hair style. That’s because, at the time, I was about to make Betan paparazzi—whom Malcolm Renbourn would quickly dub the “Pharisees”—an ongoing, constant, and relentless torment for Tribe Renbourn. Me, I can’t think about the paparazzi without remembering the tragic end to Princess Di. Those who know anything about the Mesa Verde cliff-dwellers in Colorado might recognize some of the setting revealed below.

Before Joline shares her back-story, I’ll define a few terms: “moons” are roughly our months; Wellnee is the college town where the Renbourns are living; “Sojoa” is both the sun and a sun god. “Skoling” is writing. I’ll let you figure out what namna and spears are from the context.

Remember: Beta-Earth suffers from the ancient Plague-With-No-Name which kills three out of four male infants their first year. That’s what Joline is referring to when she mentions “burnings”—meaning the sad cremations of these small victims.

Joline: It was my third half-year at Wellnee in the final moons of 1721 when I started working for Malcolm. I badly needed the work. I had no accounts
other than those from my own hands. So I was unhappy not to set studies aside to pay my way. True said, I hadn't left my home country of Aufrei to come
to Wellnee with a firm path to begin with. My parents only hope had been that I would find a good Rhasvin spear.
I say with fondness, Aufrei was a beautiful land to grow in, especially the half-year winters when we largely retreated to our cliff-caves. During those
moons, we could look over the fields and bare forests gleaming in various shades of thick snows. Hard waters hung from trees and looked like sculpted patterns
along gorges and avalanche piles in the deep valley below our cliff. In the warm months, a child could run freely and climb trees and see what seemed to
be the whole world. I could look across the valley into my home. From this perch, I thought our tall stone buildings looked like they'd been carved into
a huge flat-bottomed mouth on the side of our cliff. We were all expert climbers, able to quickly scurry up and down the sheer wall that had kept invaders
at bay in old times. Sometimes, the smoke rising from the council-pits dug into the cave floor made my home seem a stage and my community populated more
by actors than hard people who preferred simple ways.
In Aufrei, tribes are not like others know. We are a people who prefer living in small bands. For us, wisdom says the size of a country is the width of
the light cast from a festival fire. My father, like many others, had three wives. One fell through thin ice and was found not for moons. Another simply
left one night and we never saw her again. My Mother, the one female to stay with Father and keep his home livable, spent years standing in the morning
air, offering her naked breasts to Sojoa, praying for the white-light that gives mothers healthy milk. Like others of our ways, she had closed her eyes
and wailed aloud and inhaled the dawn into her lungs to energize the seeds in her womb. Standing at the cliff edge in a line with other wives sharing in
the desperate cry, she had torn at her breast with sharp pronged ice-forks so her blood would flow and freeze in the open air as a sacrifice to a god so
far from us. A god who seemingly only rewarded endurance and tired muscles. My parents had done all Sojoa had asked. Like most families, They suffered
four burnings of sons for their trouble. Only I survived. No male to grow into a new tribal head.
Yes, I was tall in the ways of my people. But I never bulked with the protective fat and muscle of my people. All thought I was a weakling in mind and
body. I would have thrived in school had I not been such a dreamer, sketching pictures where notes should have been skoled. I loved my pots and brushes.
But my attempts to share these images were awkward and lifeless. For my panels, I could mix the egg fluids, oils, and dyes to make proper tones, proper
shades for light and shadow. I could sketch stark lines and fill them with correct colors and tints. But I could animate people not. All the faces seemed
naïve, empty, even when I tried to convey the stark anger in elders like my father. I could capture what the eye can see, but not what humans shaped inside
themselves. So my panels became fire food.
More important to my parents, I caught chills easily and few thought I would survive the maiden years. A gentle soul, my Mother sighed in frustration,
needs a large tribe to shelter her. No man in Aufrie had namna to waste on the likes of me except in the spring festivals where young men were permitted
spearing of any girl wishing to, at least, rid ourselves of the unsaid shame of virginity. My Father would have forbid this. For he thought me so useless
that he'd be forced to raise any offspring I might bear. I think he hated the sight of children. For me, talking to my father was like talking to no one.
So Mother decided I should find a man bound not to Dawn-Inhale customs. It might seem harsh to some, but my family exiled me from Aufrei. Perhaps harsh
lands breed harsh beliefs. I was far from the first to hear the words many daughters dread. Still, I gratefulled when Father gave me the accounts to begin
schooling in Wellnee. The one condition was that I never return.

Beta-Earth website:

https://drwesleybritton.com/

Author contact:

spywise@verizon.net

Just for fun, I thought I’d take a break from all the character descriptions and toss in an action scene for you. This one is from The Blood of Balnakin.

For a little set-up, this scene takes place while the Renbourns are on a tour of the Old Continent where they encounter many new cultures and customs. In the setting described below, they’re at a mountain village where Malcolm and Alnenia Renbourn think they’re sharing an outdoor dinner with representatives of three remote settlements. Things get a little rougher than they expected.

To define a few terms: a “Legem” is a mayor or tribal chief. A “stadsem” is a college, or in this case, a medical school. A “cran” is a human head.

So, in the words of Alnenia Renbourn:

As the skies darkened and the fires became our main light, the bulky but powerful Legem lost his smile as he turned to Husband sitting next to him. "Honored guest," the man pronounced thick, "I must tell you entertainments here are not what you may be accustomed to. Tonight, you must know, is not an eve of mere happy sport. My second son, the one we wish to send to one of your stadsems, must this eve accept his first wife from the daughters of our three villages. Our ways will seem crude to you. I will simple say you must interfere not with what you will witness this moonless night."
Malcolm nodded as the man stood up and spoke loud in his native tongue. A young man, too young to boast a beard, came forward, kneeling his head to all of us before taking a place by his father. Suddenly, I knew what was coming. I slipped one of my hands through Malcolm's fingers and laid the other over his wrist. I began whispering soft descriptions of what I saw.
As we listened to the murmurs of the seated crowd, three women emerged into the fire-light from each corner of the triangle of tables. Each woman, barely more than girls, were naked. Each wore faces of stern resolve. Eyeing each other full wary, they moved quick around the open area gathering what stones and rocks they could carry.
When they came close to the fire-trenches, I studied the bodies of these women. To my eyes, the strongest was a tall, long-brown haired girl with long limbs, large eyes, and almost manly muscles. She was a head taller than the other two. Both shorter fighters were blonde-haired. One blonde had cropped her hair short and looked around her with fierce intelligence. The last girl, the shortest of the three, had looser locks and seemed to be a woman of a trade or craft and had lived not an outdoor life of hunting or farming. Her muscles were those not of one prepared for hard labors.
Her eyes were dull and her movements listless. Judging by their movements, none of the three seemed experienced or trained in physical combat. This would be no demonstration in Kingrol or other skilled fighting.
Then, the three stood still near their corners. Each had one arm across their bellies holding their stone collections. Their free hands held one stone tightly. "Prepare to lower your head," I told Malcolm," The air may become thick with flying rocks." I was correct. After a long minute of silence, the young man watching the game for his affections held up a horn and blew a long, deep note. With that, the three girls began hurling their weapons at each other. Around me, I heard laughs from the audience as they crouched low to avoid missent missiles. To my surprise, few stones missed their mark. I heard grunts and groans until all three had empty arms. "Now it begins," I whispered.
Now with free hands, the combatants moved closer to the center of the field, each sizing up the other. If I were one of the blonde-ones, I thought as my heart began to pound, I'd team up and take out the tall one first. Against her, unskilled in such arts, neither of the others could possibly win. As if sensing my thoughts, the two shorter girls jumped at each other, scratching and punching as the brown-hair seemed to look on and wait. But then, the two light-hairs whirled and came at the brown. Her crooked smile, to my eyes, was premature. The girl with the intelligent leer lunged for her throat while the other danced a semi-circle behind her. Trying to watch both attackers, the brown was caught off guard as the littlest woman with the dull eyes jumped and wrapped herself around the brown's knees, toppling her face forward to the ground.
The sound intensified as the grunts and cries were now almost lost in the beat of fists as the watchers began pounding a rhythm on the tables. Neither Malcolm nor I joined in as my hands clenched tight on my Husband. Out in the field, the brown-hair had twisted so her face was skyward. But her legs were trapped. While she flailed, the other blonde kept kicking her with her heels, striking hard blows on her cran and shoulders. Desperate, the brown tried to turn, and that was when a flying foot hit her exposed side. I heard a terrible crack — I certained a rib had been broken.
With that sound, the blonde who'd pinned the tall one's legs let go and crouched back, studying the scene. The brown was rolling and crying, her hands on her side. I saw not the smiles of the other two, but the battle was now more even.
I looked at Malcolm, whose face was turned down. He said nothing and I felt sorrow. I was glad he could see this not. But I could keep my eyes not off the new combat and felt my own blood warm and my pulse quicken as if my heart was part of the fast pounding on the tables. It could have been me out there, primitive, savage, if not for the will of Olos. I raised one hand to circle my breasts with a protective loop.
Then the two blondes flew at each other, both pushing their fingers in the other's throats. "You waste force," I muttered to myself, but neither heard me or would have understood. Instead, gasping and grunting, both fell to the ground, rolling and spitting. Then, the little one on the bottom — her eyes perhaps dull but her motions no longer listless — kicked up her knees, and her opponent flew near the fires. She jumped up and scrambled away from the hot blaze. The other laughed as she picked up two stones which she threw perfectly at the shorter girl. Then they were at it again, grappling and cursing and punching. Shocks of hair were pulled loose. Both faces darkened with blood.
Intense in their battle, neither noticed the brown-hair who was panting quiet but slowly rising to her knees. Her eyes were wild and bright as she painfully staggered to her feet. Silent, she moved toward the fight while the stouter of the blondes swung a hard fist square on the face of the little one with dim eyes. For one moment, she stood there, dazed. Then she crumbled to the ground. Too soon, the victorious blonde raised her fists high with a cry of triumph. But in that moment, the brown behind her quickly snaked her own arms beneath the other's armpits and then wrapped her forearms behind the blonde's cran. The seeming victor was now suspended in the air, her limbs flailing angrily.
Then, step by step, the brown slowly moved forward, bearing her burden closer and closer to a trench-fire. I saw the face of the blonde, now fearful and shocked. The brown-hair uttered, "Burn. Or yield." The desperate blonde stopped moving her arms and tried to kick herself free. But the pair only moved forward, closer to the flames.
The brown repeated, "Burn. Or yield."
All around me, I heard breathing not. The drum-beat had stopped but I knew not the moment when sound had stilled. The meats in my belly rose to my throat in anticipation. Then we all heard the pitiful "I yield!" Then the brown whirled and flung her adversary away from the flames. In one moment, both women were lying on the ground.
Then, figures from two of the tables ran onto the field, the friends and family of the vanquished women collecting their wounded daughters. At the same time, the brown hair half-crawled, half-knelt her way to our table favoring her wounded side. Half her face was already swelling and turning ugly colors. She raised an open palm and slapped it on the wood before the Legem. "I have bled to share blood," she panted hoarse. I claim your son."

Beta-Earth website:

https://drwesleybritton.com/

Author contact:

spywise@verizon.net

Here’s one last free sample from A Throne for an Alien. It’s the very descriptive and gentle introduction as “written” by a new character, Elena Richelo Renbourn. Elena paints the setting for Throne in her own words. Here ya go--

Many of the new terms below I won’t explain here as they are being introduced for the first time in Elena’s words. But you might like to know the title, Duce of Bilan, applies to Malcolm Renbourn, the title he accepted when he bonded with Sasperia Thorwaif which made him a member of the Alman Mentala, roughly the equivalent of England’s House of Lords. The reasons for that are a long story, a huge part of When War Returns, book 3 of the Chronicles.

In her first paragraph, Elena identifies this book as the last in the series. What she couldn’t have known, and what this author didn’t know at the time, was that other adventures awaited Tribe Renbourn on a Third Earth.

So without further ado and hoping those who haven’t read the first three books won’t get lost or confused, meet Elena, her family, and her country. I suspect you’ll experience a big surprise at the end, but an introduction is no place for spoilers:

Alone in my private chambers, I, Elena Richelo Renbourn, sit and skol these painful words by myself. Unlike our Preparations to our first three books, my bond-sisters feel my thoughts are of special interest beginning this, our last chronicles of the first generation of Tribe Renbourn on Beta-Earth. Sister Doret believes my story is the least known and worthy of some introduction. Sasperia believes my perspective sets the stage for the events of these years with a voice not part of the First Circle. Jona prefers to skol not at all. So, I will tell of how the little-known country of Hitalec came to offer its shores to the water-meandering Renbourn tribe and the exiled fleet in their wake in the year, 1735.

In 1720, I was in my ninth year when the word went forth that an alien from a sister-earth had been captured and was living in our northern neighbor, Balnakin. For our island, for all our part of the planet, such news was fascinating but remote. As I grew, the stories of Malcolm Renbourn and his wives, Lorei, Elsbeth, Bar, Joline, Alnenia, and then Doret, Kalma, and Sasperia were adventures of a tribe relevant to the Old and New Continents. But these stories were of little importance in our hemisphere. Hitalec, in truth, was also of little importance in our own region, the island countries part of the Grovsea basin. In the words of my Father, we were the tail of a dog whose history was wagged by others. For Hitalec was a country barely a nation.

Simple said, my mother, Nor, the Queen of Hitalec, ruled as a connector between tribes from three cultures. We had three populated regions that were primarily colonies of our neighbors. Our capital, Satraq, and the lands around it on our western coast, for example, were beholden to Menzia. Menzia was, and remains, the curving land bridging the New Continent with the land mass known as Verashesh.

My Mother's eldest sister, Kinita, ruled Menzia with her three husbands and helped our land with resources and protection. Like her sister, my mother, too, had three husbands in the Menzian royal-blood tradition. Her first bond-mate, the late Marmine Richelo, father to my older sister, Bet, had been Consort-Liege before his ill-timed fall down a mountain face. Bet would one day rule Hitalec with her wary and worried eyes.

In the craggy north coast beside our capital was Rumus, an undisciplined colony of settlers from Rymo, the desert land between Balnakin and Menzia. Once, these were the people who had filled our island before waves of disease, earthquakes, and other now forgotten devastations wiped out a population of mostly farmers and animal grazers.

My father, Tusjin, brother to the dead Consort-Liege, was Lord of this region of survivors. He was a kindly man who adored My Mother and his daughter. One day, I would govern here bonded to one Lord or another from the same culture, obedient to my sister.

Below Rumus, next to my Mother's domain, was the unruly Lumus, our industrial area governed by My Mother's third husband, Gant Thanq, the leader of the thin-haired and cat-eyed Lorilians. They were a race who had founded their own colony there many years past to have a base for their own trade interests in our seas. Unlike most from Grovsea countries, the Lorilians were blue-brown not in their skin tones, but were instead the yellow of puffy Ear-Leaves in planting times.

The daughter of this union, my sister Moy, was both slow of mind and encouraged not by her father to accomplish much in her life. She'd be ill-suited for governance or bonding, which her father desired not for her. For the Lorilians wanted little to do with a central government in our country. With government comes responsibility and restraints. The southern half of Hitalec wanted neither.

The rest of our island, beautiful as it was, was surprisingly sparse in people. For many years, the northern coast to the east was but a land for escaping Balnakin slaves to pass through after short voyages from their unfriendly homeland. Few stayed, wishing to distance themselves from slave-raiders. Those who tried to plant roots were at the mercy of foragers, bandits, and the sea-pirates who roamed freely on that coast. So, over time, few even tried to make use of our fertile soils.

By the time of my maturity, the hills to the south and to the east of Lumus were filled with secretive and hidden enclaves of former slaves only now learning that Balnakin no longer sought them. After Crater Bergarten and the miraculous bonding of Malcolm and Kalma Renbourn, blues still poured through the region as freed people, but they still wanted distance from Balnakin fearing changes in political winds. They still dug the tunnels and underground vikas free from the prying eyes of satellites in the sky.

Only the port town of Weg, an unorganized area of fishers and small farmers, sat unmolested at the end of Hitalec, far from the interests of their government. So, a vast area of land sat dormant. Inviting. Waiting.

Hitalec, remote as it was, had not been untouched by the influence of Tribe Renbourn. The Renbourn reach had, in fact, made its first presence on my island while I began completion of my school years. Helprims and teachers for the Fisher Way were now brought to our disadvantaged people in Weg and to the blue-skin cave-dwellers.

In Rumus, I dealt much with the Salk family who had many contracts with our businesses who bought and sold goods based on Alphan designs. I recall one eve listening to My Father telling My Mother about the Renbourn's visit with the Mother-Icealt of All-Domes.

"There is comfort," he said, "knowing there is another earth like ours. We're alone not."

But such musings had little to do with a young woman's life that was bordered on four sides by the Grovsea. Alma, Kirip, Silvivan, even Rhasvi were my world not, even if I shared the mother-tongue of Alma.

So, in our royal palace, we watched the vicious and deadly turmoil in Alma as if watching dynasties change in Rigel or Minnestt. When we saw the strange fleet leave the Old Continent led by the Duce of Bilan and his tribe, we watched as if seeing a tale of imaginative skolers.

My Mother leaned forward and said to My Father, "Tusjin, I've read the reports of that fleet. Those ships carry Helprims, Legems, fishers, farmers, builders, and perhaps miners and engineers — and the famous Renbourn Tribe. They seek new roots. I cannot see such as the Renbourns settling here. But the others? Tusjin, we have lands that could use such peoples. Perhaps Hitalec could attract some of the unwanted of Alma? If those sailing now settled here, they might well call for their tribes still on the Old Continent."

My Father laughed. "Perhaps. Should I make inquiries?"

And that is how it began.

Elena Renbourn,
Liege of the United States of America

The full A Throne for an Alien is available at:
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Book 1 of the series, The Blind Alien, is still on sale for 99 cents!
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Coming This Fall!

The Third Earth—The Beta-Earth Chronicles: Book 5
http://bmfiction.com/science-fiction/...

The Third Earth—The Beta-Earth Chronicles: Book 5
By Wesley Britton
Publisher: BearManor Media (November 3, 2016)
ASIN: B01MSH4KZG
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MSH4KZG


Immerse yourself in an extraordinary universe revealed by the most original storytelling you’ll ever experience. “Science fiction yes, but so much more.”

For twenty years, Dr. Malcolm Renbourn and Tribe Renbourn faced adventure after adventure, struggle after struggle on Beta-Earth.

Now, Renbourn and five of his Betan wives are forced to cross the multi-verse once again, this time to the strange world called Cerapin-Earth. After startling and frightening physical transformations, the altered Renbourns meet two new kinds of humanity. One is the dominant pairs who are able to share thoughts and sensations at the same time. The other are the nams, single-bodied people the pairs deem defective mono-minds. As a result, nams are exiled from the overpopulated cities of pyramid hives.

Tribe Renbourn must join the outcasts and teach them they are as worthy of love and acceptance as any unkind pair. But helping the nams learn how to stand up for themselves ultimately leads to a catastrophic war. At the same time, Cerapin scientists plan another multi-versal jump that must also end in a costly disaster. Along the way, two sexy spies complicate everything.

On a world where technology is worshiped like a religion, how can the nam rebels overcome the superior armaments of the pairs using primitive weaponry? While this conflict brews, Tribe Renbourn explores what it means to be human in ways they never expected. Will their epic end like it began, forced to sacrifice themselves to save a doomed city?


The Third Earth is available through Smashwords at:
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Here’s an excerpt from the brand-new The Third Earth—The Beta-Earth Chronicles: Book 5. This section comes from a much longer battle scene in the war between the pairs of Cerapin-Earth and the nams, the single-bodied humans the pairs are invading across a bridge that connects their respective districts. The pairs have vast technological advantages; the nams have the heart and courage to fight for self-preservation.

The story is told from the perspective of Malcolm Renbourn who’s watching the war from inside an underground bunker where a number of television screens show various angles of the fighting.

Without question, all eyes centered on the coming main event. The bridge. On one side, the pairs were lining up rows of their infantry that would lead the way for their armored troop carriers. A seemingly endless number of nams were preparing for their own, far less professional march. The pairs began by calling out through their loudspeakers and speaking-cones that resistance wasn’t necessary. No lives needed to be lost. No blood needed to be spilt. The 33 army was there to meet the needs of their people and cause no harm. Well, the nams were not interested in the needs of the unkind people of District 33.
Almost simultaneously, the two forces began their marches. I know not who fired first, but I’m sure it was the hail of arrows sent into the 33 ranks. They accomplished little beyond annoying the pairs. In response, the invaders shot the electric fire from their pistol-batons and sent waves of their whirling stun discs into the nams. The pairs sent hovering winged drones towards the nams, which suddenly wobbled in the air before crashing to the stones below. My eyes widened, as I saw nam arms pointing into the sky. I realized some of them were holding up signal blockers. Others responded to 33 technology by flinging bottles and jars containing fluids that ignited and exploded in the frontlines of the pairs.
Despite these opening shots, both sides moved relentlessly forward. For both sides, an obvious problem was the confinement of the walled bridge. Neither side could ever retreat as, especially in the nam hordes, there were bodies in the rear waiting to have their chance to join the battle.
With a ear-splitting howl and roar, the nams stopped their slow march and began screaming and running into the 33 soldiers. “Flam! Flam! Flam!” the nams cried in unison. Roughly translated, that little word meant “Those of us about to die will take you with us!”
That battle-cry was almost a weapon of its own. For the invaders, it resulted in confusion and surprise on so many faces. For the nams, they were voicing the rage and pain they had felt all their lives. While the 33 military was sturdily professional and didn’t break, the nams vented an emotional outcry that drove all of them to frenzied fury. They didn’t stop even as the bridge began to fill with the downed bodies of the dead and wounded of both sides. The nams had become screaming savages now flushed with the chance to hit back with a vengeance that was filling the pairs with growing fear.
Finally, the relentless flood of the nams broke through the first ranks of the pairs and hand-to-hand combat made it impossible for the fighters to know just who they were hitting, cutting, shooting, beating. Soldiers on both sides were picking up weapons left on the ground and turning them against whomever they were scrambling with. As the fighting was so close, the 33 forces could not use some of their more sophisticated weaponry as they’d be just as likely to cut down their own people as much as any nams. There armored vehicles ground to a stop as, apparently, the pairs wished not to crush the bodies of their own wounded and dying in their path. Some of their mortars might have taken out some of the nams near the back, but that could have resulted in weakening the bridge which was already quaking with the carnage.



The Third Earth is available at:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MSH4KZG


The Third Earth is also available through Smashwords at:
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Learn more about the Beta-Earth Chronicles at:

www.drwesleybritton.com

“I've read a Lot of books, both professionally and for fun, and I have to say that Wes' Alien series is one of the best. I urged him to continue it, and I'm glad it's a series now!”—Ben Ohmart, publisher, BearManor Media

It’s been awhile since I posted an excerpt here from The Third Earth, book 5 of the Beta-Earth Chronicles. I freely admit understanding what follows will be easiest for those who have read the previous four volumes or those who have read the introduction in The Third Earth which fills in the story of what took place before what is below. Here, hopefully all new readers will get a taste of Malcolm Renbourn’s first person narration and enjoy meeting the main cast of characters:

In the beginning, I was the most ordinary of human failures on a planet I later called Alpha-Earth. The most important moment I experienced on Alpha-Earth was the moment I left it and was captured in a device that dragged me across the multi-verse to Beta-Earth. All I left behind was my mother's grave, my father's grief, my energetic dog, and little else. I had an old car, a part-time job as an adjunct history professor, and a usually empty bed. If the gods needed a human instrument for their grand design, I was the least obvious of all candidates.. .and the least willing.
Later, I described that wrenching moment:
"Unexpectedly, mysteriously, in a flash, an acrid, pungent flash, the air changed around me. Gravity shifted, and the space around me expanded strangely. I could no longer see. I felt a scorching white light. Every cell in my body exploded, stretched, every hair on my skin turning into a field of burning wicks. In that wall of fire, every bone, muscle, and tissue of my body disintegrated and then, somehow, remolded."

Twenty years later, in exactly the same geographic location, I experienced those sensations all over again, but there were differences. When I came over from Alpha-Earth to Beta-Earth, I had no idea what was happening to me. When I came over from Beta-Earth to Cerapin, I unhappily knew what was coming. The second time around, I didn't come through the dimensional barrier alone. Five of my Betan wives also had to make the journey.

The most important difference was that the first transfer blinded me. It took away the sight I'd known for thirty years. For the next two decades, I saw absolutely nothing. After the second transfer, I felt my rubbery, jerky, awkward body slide to the floor, and I noticed something special: I could see again!

Strange said, the first thing I saw was the floor beneath my face. Is that white tile? Light brown? I'd forgotten colors. As I lay on the cold metal — at least I assumed it was metal — I could barely move. Just turning over and looking up took time. A painfully bright yellow light glowed down at me. I felt and saw the body of a woman crawling on top of me. My blurry, confused eyes slowly brought her face into some form of focus. Oh, it had to be Elsbeth! She had been standing next to me in that circle back in Bergarten, so it had to be her. She seemed drenched in hot, white light, and I knew what dangled before me had to be her long brown hair. I wasn't sure if I was actually recognizing it with my eyes or accepting what my mind was telling me what those things had to be. For twenty years, I hadn't known what brown was. Was it memory of long lost colors I was perceiving, or was I piecing together descriptions I've been hearing all these years?

I shook my befuddled head as my blinking and blinking new eyes tried to bring coherence to the face people had been telling me was so plain. Plain! Whatever my odd vision was doing, I'd never seen anyone so beautiful in all my life!

Elsbeth looked into my eyes, and her own brown doe-eyes widened with pleasure. "You can see! Husband can see!" She turned her head and again called out to our
company, "Husband can see again!"

I reached up and explored Elsbeth's face with my shaking fingers. Tears ran down
my cheeks. So long ago, Elsbeth Cawl had been a poor and simple farm girl, a tiller of
the fields certain she'd never bear children. Elsbeth and her sister Lorei had joined the Scratchers of Freedom underground. Planning to help shelter runaway slaves, they instead hid a fugitive blind alien in a little cell beneath their little farmhouse. That first night, Elsbeth had drained so much fear and pain from a very anguished and very ill alien by pulling a very surprised stranger as deep inside her as she could. After that, I can't count the days and nights Elsbeth soothed my tormented heart simply by her gentle and devoted presence. Not just me. Elsbeth could soften and melt away so many hard and harsh emotions in anyone around her merely by being her loving self, and here she was in this place simply because she would never let her husband be anywhere without her.

"It's absolutely perfect," I said, "that my first sight is you!"

She beamed and looked at me even closer. "You look as the first day we met! Your
beard, your hair, have lost their gray, their whiteness of age! You have much hair
again! Your skin has no wrinkles, your color be flushed with youth!"

I puzzled over this revelation and wondered if my muscles would soon show any
sign of restored vigor. Our lips were pressed together, and then she rolled off me, as I
began to try to sit up.

I managed to prop my back against a slick wall, holding Elsbeth tight against me.
We were next to a transparent glass wall that surrounded us on three sides. The
yellow light I'd noticed before pointed at us from the top. Everything seemed to bathe
in bright light. I didn't know how much of this shined from above or how much
resulted from what was happening to me. My pupils felt watery, heavy, and dilated.

I turned my head to the right, knowing Joline had stood beside me there on Beta-Earth. As my vision seemed to be clearing, at least for short distances, I saw Joline
lying on her belly, her face turned to give me a lop-sided smile. While I had known
what would happen to her, what I saw was still a shock.

On Beta-Earth, Joline Renbourn was world-renowned as quite a beauty. Her fame
partly drew from her towering figure, a heritage from her upbringing in the cliff-
dwellers in the ice-country of Aufry. I had spent many nights delightfully playing with
her ridiculously long legs. In this pyramid of glass, I couldn't tell if she still stood on
tall limbs, but I could see in her face just how much she had been transformed.

Before we had come to the Bergarten chamber for the transference, Joline had
been told she would be joining her consciousness with her bond-sister and my former
wife, Bar Tine Renbourn. Ten years before, Bar had been murdered in Dellmire by the brother of Kalma Salk, the brown-skinned woman prophesized to be the wife who would reconcile my family with the country of Balnakin.

For ten years, Bar's spirit had watched over us on Beta-Earth, but her essence also voyaged often to the planet we had just come to. In one vision quest, she had brought the spirit-selves of Lorei and Doret Renbourn to Cerapin, showing them the world that the six of us must come to so Cerapin would become aware of the multi-verse. As
a result, Bar knew the language most of the rest of us didn't.

In many ways, Joline and Bar merging together seemed weirdly appropriate. Joline and Bar had become my wives together at the same time in the same ceremony on the same day when Bar had been freed from her so-called Balnakin rehabilitation. In our Wellnee home, while Lorei and Elsbeth tended to household duties, Joline and Bar sat together with me on my office porch helping turn my Alpha-Earth stories into articles and books for Betan readers.

They became fast friends and had much in common. Joline's parents had exiled her from her cliff home because her father thought her a mere nuisance and burden with no prospects. All her life, Bar had been a blue-skinned Balnakin slave with no will of her own, until she found the courage to help send me on the road to freedom, sacrificing herself to face the vengeance of her brown-skinned masters.

With the hideousness of the Bergarten disaster, Bar became a tormented soul, who fled our family to try to escape the memories of that awful day. The only one of us she kept in contact with was Joline.

Despite Bar's self-imposed exile from us, she and Joline had even more in common. Joline became known for her books of rather graphic erotic verse. Bar's creativity came out in her sculptures and ceramic objects. After her death, Bar's spirit was very much Joline's special guardian angel.. .until now.

I saw her face divided as if she was half Joline and half Bar — "Jolbar." While I couldn't have described her with the right words at the time, I can now say that the right side of her head had obviously belonged to Joline, with the emerald-green eye and the straight light-blonde hair that reached her chin. The left side had belonged to Bar, with the puffier cheek, the inset blue eye, and the buttery, flowing blonde mane. On Beta-Earth, I'd heard that her skin had an enamel smoothness. I now saw this description made sense. The right half of her lips were thin, the left fuller. Her eyes looked not coordinated. Her right one was glassy as it stared at me. The Bar eye seemed to be looking off to faraway places.

After a few moments of soft groans, Jolbar tried to focus both eyes on me and say, "Hello, husband. With your new eyes, meet your new wife — well, wives. I guess we shall be Jolbar Sonam Tine Renbourn. We no doubt look as strange as we feel. We can't get the strength to stand up."

"I know the feeling, or the lack of it. Maybe it's just any strength I can't manage."

Jolbar nodded, and withdrew into herself. Likely, she lacked the energy or the will to talk further. She rolled over on her back, holding her hands up in the air. She twisted and flexed her fingers, the Bar half of her no doubt exploring sensations she hadn't felt since her murder. She must have been curious about the differences she saw and felt, her Joline hand long and slim, her Bar hand smaller and a bit more pudgy.

My wonderstruck eyes moved past Elsbeth on my left to look at her birth-sister, the once blind prophetess Lorei Cawl Renbourn. Like me, she was sitting against the glass wall. For the first time, I could see how the Cawl sisters were so different, at least in appearance. Unlike the curvy Elsbeth, Lorei was long and lanky. Unlike the rough-skinned Elsbeth, Lorei's skin was clear, creamy, smooth. She had been known
for her grace, elegance, and the nimbleness of her fingers with needles and thread, especially when she sewed children's clothes and toys.

The most obvious difference was her distinct eyes. One looked sharp at me, the other seemed dead in its socket. That was because, like Jolbar, Lorei, too, had a dual consciousness, a duality she had been sharing with Doret Renbourn for several years. Half of Lorei's mind and senses were back on Beta-Earth, housed in the tiny frame of the mutant dwarf who had become the Mother-Icealt of All-Domes. Likewise, Lorei's body now carried part of the essence of Doret in this very room. So the eye that looked sightless and opaque was really the eye of a sister sitting wherever she was on Beta-Earth. This meant Doret Renbourn could witness everything Lorei saw.

Again, I thought the joining of these two souls was perfectly appropriate. From the beginning, Lorei had carried the breath of Olos inside her, her gift of prophecy a dominant force in nearly every aspect of all our lives. She had always urged a worship of Olos as the spiritual rudder of our family. She had known when new wives would join the tribe, she had seen many of the coming battles and challenges that faced us, even when she herself resisted our foretold futures.

When Doret joined us, our spiritual pair became inseparable. She often guided Lorei's gift drawing on her years of training in Appool Hollow-Bone Dream-Guessing. I admit, the rest of us came to dread their pronouncements. They always seemed to place more and more heavy burdens on Tribe Renbourn. None had been anywhere as burdensome as what had happened to us this unhappy day.

Still, I quickly thought how good Lorei looked in her bright-green three-piece suit of protective fabrics, identical to the suits all of us wore. In all our jackets and pants, we carried skil-pads of so much knowledge of Beta-Earth in very deep pockets. I also had pads of all my writings about Alpha-Earth, and a thin music player rested in my inner right jacket pocket that not only had all my Alphan music but many samples of Betan sounds as well. I planned to protect that for as long as I could, feeling the music was too precious to just hand over like we planned for all of our other pads — except for all the thin vials of Beta-Earth seeds that Elsbeth carried. According to Lorei, these were the most important gifts we brought with us. They should not be revealed until — well, I had no idea.

"Hello, Husband," Lorei smiled. "I see you have regained the youth of your first cross-over. True said, in many ways, our bodies have been restored to what they were twenty years past. Our biological clocks have been reset, and more. I also see you are practicing new sight. Trust me — I remember well trying to adapt to having vision for the first time when Doret and I were transformed in that cave ritual. Push yourself not! Comprehending depth, focusing on distant things will take time and much queasiness and head pain. Determining what be up, what be down, what be left, what be right and how far things are from you will be clear not for some time."

"And everything is so bright! Is that the light above us?"

"In part. Much be your visual organs trying to process what they haven't expected to digest for so long. Unlike me, who was blind from birth, your mind has all those old memories of colors, shapes, dimensions, and distances you're trying to match with what surrounds you here. Your mind be reaching back to all those previous
experiences to start to reuse them to make sense of where we are now. Correctly matching what you touch and what you see will also take getting used to. I certain if anything is going to form quickly in your sight, it will be us! If all your senses know anything to the smallest sensory details, it be the bodies of your wives. I wager all else will sharpen much more slowly."

I nodded and tried to look around some more. I turned to look at my other two wives, and my jaw dropped with almost incomprehensible disbelief.

On Beta-Earth, Alnenia Ricipa Renbourn had considered herself no beauty, but not unpleasant to look at. I had heard her most distinguishing physical characteristics, beyond her very muscular and well-toned body, were the long, single Pynti eyebrow that ran over her eyes and the thought lines that often creased her forehead.

On the other hand, Kalma Salk Renbourn was known as a most attractive Balnakin brown-skin, with unique yellow eyes, a commanding presence, and a very noticeable intensity in all her doings.

I can say that the pairing of Alnenia and Kalma was the least likely of all the changes to my wives. Unlike Lorei and Doret, or Joline and Bar, I don't recall any special bonds between Alnenia and Kalma. True, unlike the lifelong poverty of the rest of the outcasts and exiles of the original sisterhood, both these women were raised by prosperous tribes with privileged backgrounds. True, both women were highly skilled at working with numbers, especially tribal accounts and ledgers, not to mention international commerce. Alnenia had been Kalma's first friend when the then haughty and aloof Balnakin had come to help save Tribe Renbourn from financial ruin.

Both these women were easily the strongest physically of all my wives, and I confess, the most assertive in bed — especially Kalma. She didn't shy away from pinning me down on the sheets before rolling over and putting her powerful legs to work.

For all the years we were together, the closest friendship I saw between the Salks and Ricipas was that between the fathers, Lius Salk and Sikas Ricipa, two giants of both commerce and moral leadership. Both hadn't been too certain I was worthy of their daughters, but over time I discovered I had gained two important mentors, as well as two indispensable wives.

The women that sat together across from me bore no resemblance to what they must have looked like on Beta-Earth. Now, they had identical gray-skin faces that had been transformed beyond recognition. What hair they had worn before was gone. Their foreheads bulged out with a wide, rounded, and almost oval lobe on each of them. Their jaws were now extremely pronounced, jutting out with squared thick chins. Streaks and spots of different colors illustrated their flesh, especially their arms. Their incisors looked almost wolfish. Their feet had grown so wide and large, they had had to remove their boots. I sorrow to remember because my expression when I first saw them must have been one of revulsion and fright, and they looked back at me, their faces mirroring exactly the same emotions.

Order The Third Earth at:
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