Catch the Lightning

by Catherine Asaro

  “They dropped the attempted murder charges,” I said. “Mario’s done his time for the rest.”

  Brad spoke gently. “I’ll think about it.”

  I knew what “think about it” meant. He wasn’t going to give Mario a job either.

  Brad motioned at Althor, who was headed with the bartender back to the storeroom. “How does he get his skin like that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And purple hair.” Brad shook his head as he walked away. “Sometimes I can’t figure what you kids call style.”

  I watched Althor carry two more boxes out of the storeroom. “Kid” was hardly accurate. For once I was glad that when I was tired, I looked older than my true age.

  At midnight, I found Althor in an empty storeroom with Brad and two Waitresses, Sami and Delia. They were sitting on the floor drinking coffee and eating jelly rolls from Winchell’s. Brad beamed, and Sami and Delia were flirting with Althor.

  “Hi.” I stood awkwardly in the doorway, wondering if I was intruding.

  “Hey.” Brad grinned. “Look at this.” He spread his arms, indicating the empty room. ‘Althor finished both storerooms.” ' “That’s great,” I said. Althor remained silent as Sami snuggled up to his side, her blond hair falling across his arm. He wasn’t paying attention to her, but that didn’t mean anything. She was older than me and lovely too. Maybe he wanted me to get lost. But then he stood up. “Are you finished?”

  I nodded. “All done.”

  Althor barely said good-bye to the others as he left. Nor did he say much while we waited at the bus stop. I wondered if he were irritated at me for interrupting their party. Either that, or he was tired. Then I realized that after clearing out two storerooms in one night, he was probably exhausted.

  The bus pulled up and Althor followed my lead, letting me pay foi us both. After we sat down at the back, he put his arm around my waist and slid me over to sit against him. I blinked, pleased, and let my head rest against his shoulder.

  “I almost forgot.” He pulled two bills out from his belt. “Here.”

  It was a fifty and a ten. “Why are you giving it to me?”

  “What would I do with it?”

  “It’s money. Don’t you know what money is?”

  He spoke drowsily. “In abstract. I never carry it.”

  “I can’t take this.” I tried to give him back the bills. “It’s yours. You earned it.”

  “Can you keep it for me?”

  “Just until you need it.”

  “All right.” Althor leaned his head back and closed his eyes, letting his head roll until his cheek came to rest against the top of my head. He wrapped his arms around me, as if he were a small boy going to sleep with his favorite stuffed animal. I almost laughed. Closing my eyes, I drowsed next to him, content.

  I woke up just in time to ring for our stop. Althor followed me out the back door of the bus, rubbing his eyes.

  He was quiet as we headed for my apartment. At first I thought he was bored, that he was walking me home only because he felt he should. I was so busy feeling self-conscious that it took a while for the eddies of his mood to register. Finally it occurred to me that maybe he felt clumsy too. It was an odd thought; he seemed so confident, uncaring of what people thought of him. Except for me. Why?

  I watched him rub the small of his back. “I can’t believe you moved all those boxes in one night,” I said.

  “That’s what that man Brad said too.” He smiled. “Ragnar would say the hard work is good for me.”

  “Who?”

  “Ragnar. Admiral Ragnar Bloodmark. A family friend.” His face relaxed. “He’s been my mentor since I was a small boy. Like a second father.”

  It was impossible for me to imagine having not one, but two, fathers. “You’re lucky.”

  “He could never replace my father. My father is a bard. A singer. Ragnar is a military man, and a biomech doctor. He understood when I decided to become a Jagernaut. My father, all he sees is that I might die.”

  I spoke softly. “That’s because he loves you.”

  Althor’s expression gentled, and he brushed his hand over my hair. I picked up a lovely sense from him, as if he wanted to make contact in some way he couldn’t define himself, to touch me with a drop of that love both his father and mentor had given him. I caught his fingers and kissed his knuckles the way he had kissed mine that morning. As I let his hand go, his mouth opened slighdy, surprise glistening in the air around him.

  Although we were silent after that, it was comfortable, neither of us feeling the need to talk. Eventually he started playing with his transcom. Once again, it appeared from nowhere.

  “Where do you put that when you’re not using it?” I asked. “In its slot.”

  “Slot?”

  He didn’t respond. As he worked with his transcom, his good mood vanished.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “The Jag, it still has problems.”

  I wanted to ask more, but we had reached the steps of my building. I stopped, awkward again. “Well. This is it. Thanks for walking me home.”

  Althor stood looking at me. I hesitated, not wanting him to leave but afraid to go any further.

  It was Althor who finally spoke. “I should walk you upstairs.” He paused. “To make certain you reach your rooms safely.”

  I swallowed. “Okay.”

  As we entered the building, I flipped the light switch. Nothing happened, so we climbed the stairs in the dark and walked to my room with only moonlight from the window to show the way.

  I stopped at my door. “Well. This is it.”

  He glanced around the scorched hall. “You will be safe here?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Do your brothers wait inside?”

  I hesitated. “I don’t have no brothers.”

  “Then why you tell me you do last night?”

  “I didn’t trust you.”

  He touched my cheek. “And now you do?”

  My instincts said yes, logic said no. I knew I should listen to the logic. But I was so tired of coming home alone to that ugly little room alone. “I was thinking… you might come in.”

  Althor slid his hand into my hair, letting his fingers pull through the long strands. “I would like that.”

  I was so nervous, I kept putting keys in the wrong locks. Finally I got the door open. The electricity wasn’t working inside either, so I retrieved my flashlight from the TV table. It made a circle of light around me and left the rest of the room in shadow.

  Althor came in and locked up the door. The police lock took him the longest, as he figured out how to set the bar in the floor and brace it against the door. I pointed the light in his direction, shining it on the wall when he turned around so it wouldn’t blind him.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “Why is there no power here?”

  “It’ll come on in a day or two.” I took a stand I had made out of an old birdcage out from under the table and set it next to the TV When I stuck in the flashlight, it shined on the ceiling.

  “Two days?” Althor stared at me. “Why so long?”

  “Our landlords are creeps. They take forever to fix stuff.” I went to the kitchenette and pulled my glass salad bowl off the shelf under the counter. Back at the card table, I set the rose-colored bowl upside down on the stand, covering the flashlight. The glow through the bowl made a dusky rose-hued light. It was pretty, though too dim to see much even near the table. Althor peered at the makeshift lamp. “That’s clever.”

  “The lights go out so much I had to figure out something.” He stepped closer to me. Too close. It made me aware of how different he was: voice, step, body, clothes, everything was unfamiliar. He had put his box away, but where I had no idea. His clothes lay flat against his body.

  He spoke gently. “Sometimes the night needs a softer light.” His hand folded around my hair—and that’s when I saw the hinge. A ridge ran from the base of his middle finger to his wris
t, letting him fold his palm in half, lengthwise from fingers to wrist. “What happened to your hand?” I asked.

  “My hand?”

  “It has a hinge.”

  Althor stiffened, and the air tightened like a sheet of plastic. He withdrew from me, niot visibly, but I felt it as much as if he had turned and walked across the room. He spoke coolly. “It had a defect. When I was born. This is how they fixed it.”

  A birth defect? I flushed, wanting to kick myself for my lack of tact.

  Then I had an odd sensation: Althor reset his mood, like, a computer. He relaxed and hinged his hand from wrist to fingertips, folding it around mine. Bending his head, he slid his other arm around my waist. Then he kissed me.

  I knew where we were going, and it was happening too fast. I had always been shy, even with boys my age. I didn’t understand why I was acting so out of character. Both of us were, actually. To this day I’m not sure how much of it was the intense pheromones humans with our rare genetic makeup produce and how much was the instinct born of those genetics. Salmon don’t think about why they must swim upstream to mate; they just do it. All I could have said that night was that it felt right, as if we blended like colors swirling into paint.

  When I slid my arms around his waist, he felt solid and masculine. He nuzzled my hair. “I like your perfume.”

  “I’m not wearing any.”

  “It must be you, then.” Lifting his head, he nodded toward the bed. “Maybe we should sit down.”

  “Okay.” I couldn’t look at him. I was too young and too confused to realize we were dealing with more than normal attraction. My main concern was how to ask if he had protection. Althor had a better idea what was happening, but his worries were about the star-spanning ramifications of his actions. He was making a choice that, for him, would normally have been rigidly controlled by the government, with or without his consent.

  He drew me to the bed and sat down, his booted feet planted wide apart on the floor. I stood awkwardly in front of him, between his knees, holding his hands in mine.

  “Don’t you want to sit?” he asked.

  I nodded, too nervous to answer. Then I sat next to him, trying to figure out how to ask what I had to ask. Althor nudged me onto my back and stretched out next to me, sliding his hand up my body, starting at my thigh and pulling up' my skirt, then moving his hand over my clothes to my waist. His grip was so big and my waist so small that he closed his hand more than halfway around it. He went up farther and cupped my breast, along with a handful of ruffles, as if I had said, “Sure, you can touch me there,” instead of what I wanted to say, which was, “Slow down.”

  “So pretty,” he murmured. “Who would have thought I would end up here with you tonight?”

  Ask, I thought. But how? What wouldn’t sound stupid? What did it matter if it sounded stupid? Better stupid than dead or pregnant.

  “Tina?” He stopped rubbing my breast. “Is something wrong?”

  “Do you have a thing?”

  “A thing?”

  “You know. A condom.” There. I had said it.

  His face blanked. Metallic. He felt like a computer doing a search routine. Then he returned to normal. “I can’t find ‘condom.’ What does it mean?”

  “It’s so I don’t get—you know.”

  “Get what?”

  “Sick.”

  “I am not sick.”

  “We shouldn’t take chances. Besides, I don’t want to get pregnant.”

  “You can’t get pregnant.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s true my ancestors were human,” he said. “But they were taken from Earth so long ago, it’s unlikely you and I can interbreed.”

  I almost smiled. I doubted anyone else’s man had tried a line like that. “Althor, if you don’t have any with you, we have to get some. I’m not trying to lead you on, but I won’t go no further without it.”

  “Is maybe possible I could get you pregnant,” he admitted.

  “Yeah. Is maybe possible.”

  “This is not something you would like?”

  “Althor!”

  “I take it this mean ‘no.’ You don’t want a baby if I am the father.”

  “Of course not!” I had no way to know that, among his people, I had just done the role-reversed equivalent of a man in my culture telling a woman, “I’m going to bed with you because I want to get laid, but no way would I ever consider you good enough for anything more.”

  I could tell something was wrong, though. “My mother raised me without a father,” I said. “I don’t want a child until I know its father will stay with us.”

  His face gentled and things were right again. I didn’t know then that he had already figured out the cultural differences. All he said was, “I have no ‘protection.’ You have none either?”

  “None.”

  He tilted his head toward the television. “Can we order it from your console?”

  “That’s a TV You can’t order things from it.”

  “TV?”

  “Wait. I know. I’ll be right back.” I scrambled off the bed and went to the door.

  “Tina, wait.”

  I turned to see him sitting up again, boots planted wide, elbows resting on his knees. He said, “You will come back?”

  That caught me by surprise. That he thought I might skip out, leaving him alone—it seemed an odd idea, more like something I would think about him rather than the other way around. “I’ll be right back. I promise.” Then I undid the locks and went out into the hall.

  Bonita and Harry’s apartment was on the same floor, three doors down. I knocked, praying Bonita answered instead of her husband, Harry.

  The door opened a crack. “Tina? What are you doing up so late?” A chain rattled and the door opened, revealing a sleepy Bonita in her nightgown and a fuzzy pink sweater with pearly buttons. A black braid fell over her shoulder.

  I didn’t know her that well. We said hello when we saw each other, but given the differences in our work schedules that wasn’t often. She had always seemed to like me, though.

  I spoke awkwardly. “It’s—uh—I needed to ask…”

  She took my arm and pulled me inside. “What’s the matter, honey?”

  “Nothing. I’m fine. I need sort of a favor.”

  “A favor?”

  “Do you have— I mean, I guess Harry would have them…”

  “Have what?” She yawned. “It’s late, Tina.”

  I flushed. “A condom.”

  “Oh.” She came wide awake. “Are you sure?”

  “Well, it’s better than if I don’t have one.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” She considered me. “Is it Jake? Don’t let him push—”

  “It’s not Jake.” He had been my first and only boyfriend, and we had broken up months ago. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have woken you up.” I felt more foolish by the minute. I backed toward the door. “You go back to sleep. I won’t—”

  “Wait.”

  “Bonita laid her hand on my arm. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

  She disappeared into the bedroom and reappeared with a box. She put it in my hands, folding my fingers around it. “Tina, think,” she said. “Before you rush into something.” Her expression reminded me of my mother. “Why don’t you stay here tonight? You can sleep on the couch.”

  I shook my head. “Thanks, Nita. But no thanks.” I backed out the door. “Muchas gracias."Then I was out in the hall and running to my apartment. It was a relief when I heard her door close.

  Althor was still sitting on the bed. His curiosity tickled my nose like pepper. When I sat next to him, he eased the box out of my clenched hand. He opened it and pulled out a small square of foil, turning it this way and that.

  “What do we do with it?” he asked.

  “When it’s—well, that’s the time. You know. With us and all. That’s when you do the thing.”

  He laughed. “I must be slow tonight. I have no understanding of wha
t you just said.”

  My face burned. “I’ll show you. When it’s time.”

  “All right.” He put the foil back in the box and set it on the floor near the head of the bed. As he turned to me, the tickle of his curiosity faded from my skin. He replaced it with a real tickle, the touch of his finger as he trailed it along my arm to my shoulder, then down my neckline.

  Althor eased us down to lie on the bed. Holding me close, he worked at the laces on my uniform, pulled and pushed, ran his finger over the holes. But he couldn’t get the laces undone. Finally he made a frustrated noise. “Does it come with manual explaining how it works?”

  I laughed, a soft shy sound. Pushing my hand between us, I unfastened the laces. After he pulled off the bodice, and the bustier under it, the cool air raised goose bumps on my breasts. Then it was warm again, as he hugged me. While he worked on my skirt, I fumbled with his vest, having no more luck than he had with my clothes. I found no hooks, snaps, buttons, ties, or anything. My hand just slid over the leather, or what I thought was leather. It was actually a synthetic material designed to insulate against cold and heat.

  He pushed up on his elbow and ran his finger down the front of his vest, popping it open. I had no idea how he did it, but there it was. Or wasn’t. His chest was beautiful, muscles and smooth planes, with a dusting of gold hairs. Strange, though. The aureoles around his nipples glinted in the dim light, more like metal than the rest of his skin. I touched one, expecting it to be cold. But $ wasn’t. It just looked like metal.

  Althor took off all my clothes except the stockings and garter belt. He kept playing with them, not so much as if he had never seen such clothes, but as if he never expected to meet a woman who actually wore them. To me, they were just the impractical blue lace stockings that came with the uniform. I didn’t realize that to him, they were lingerie in a style over three hundred years old.

  Watching him undress almost made me forget how nervous I felt. He was gorgeous. His body was all muscles, wide at the shoulders and narrow at the hips. When he lay down again, I told myself I wasn’t embarrassed. In truth, I was so self-conscious I could hardly think.