Metal Wolf

by Lauren Esker

  She turned away from him and opened the door of her primitive land vehicle. Cool night air washed in. Rei automatically flinched away from it, trying uselessly to activate his personal shield to protect his face and lungs. Nothing happened, of course. And anyway, if this world's atmosphere was poisonous to Polarans, he was already doomed.

  What was she doing anyway? Getting a weapon? Going for help?

  Instead she circled around and opened his door. She said something calmly and softly in a "talking to children and invalids" voice. Apparently some things were a human universal, even on a possibly-uncontacted planet.

  When she laid her hand on his arm, Rei jerked away, his nerve endings lighting up with an instinctive fight-or-flee response. He had to squash his attempt to deploy his body's defenses—what few he had left.

  The cuffs didn't work. That meant no shields, no guns, no cutting blade.

  He had his natural claws—which he'd held to her throat earlier, fingertips half-shifted through pure instinct—and his scant handful of completely physical mods independent of the cuffs, like his healing nanites. And that was it.

  He'd never felt so unarmed.

  But she had pulled away as soon as she realized he didn't want to be touched. Taking a step backward, she gestured to the dark structure behind her and went on speaking in her singsong language, as if she thought he could understand her.

  She wanted him to go in. That was plain enough. He stepped down carefully from the vehicle, holding onto the door for support and working hard to make sure she couldn't see how weak and disoriented he really was.

  He was someplace rural; that much he could tell. He didn't know what kind of manure he smelled, but he'd bet it was from a domestic animal, and there was minimal light pollution to hide the unfamiliar constellations in the sky. A bright white light behind the outbuilding lit up the yard, but they were hidden in the building's inky black shadow; even his sharp Polaran night vision had trouble penetrating the gloom.

  This planet didn't seem to be as undeveloped as his native world. From the smell of her vehicle, they possessed some sort of combustion engines. His people were still at the "boats and foot travel" stage. Still, this world's technology, what he'd seen of it so far, was a long way from hovertrains and jump-capable ships.

  I bet they don't have spaceflight, he thought as he walked carefully toward the dark building, with Sarah hovering anxiously at his side, not quite touching him. They're not used to strangers here. Primitive farming planet, I guess ... at least this part of it.

  Polara technically had a spaceport, after all, and when he'd left his homeworld, galactically advanced technology had been drifting outward from the cities, spread by trade and warfare among the many native villages and tribes. This world might be similar. And it had to be relatively close to the system he'd jumped out of, which meant he was probably still inside Galatean space.

  But there were a lot of primitive worlds in the galaxy, officially within the domain of one star-spanning empire or another, yet unexplored and sometimes even undiscovered. He thought he might be on one of those.

  It's possible no offworlders have been here since the Founders seeded this planet.

  Rook would have loved that. He would have already started asking a thousand questions, by gesture language if necessary. The culture and history of other planets had always been endlessly fascinating to him.

  Rei swallowed hard against a surge of nausea, smothering his emotions under a glacial calm. It helped that his headache was still trying to expand to fill his whole awareness. He let himself focus on the pain. It was better than thinking about anything else.

  (Rook's bright intelligence and gentle spirit, snuffed out in a war he'd been drafted into as a child, never given a choice—)

  Sudden light made Rei stop in his tracks. Sarah was just removing her hand from the wall, where she had flipped a switch. Electric light, he thought, squinting as the light stabbed his night-adapted pupils and worsened his headache. This technology must be common, if it was being used in a storage shed which, his nose told him, was used for keeping beasts. But it was also a very basic use of electricity. The lights were nothing but glowing filaments enclosed in glass, lighting up a large space containing equipment, piles of hay and grain, and enclosures for animals.

  Homesickness for the world of his childhood punched him in the gut. This wasn't exactly the same, but it was closer than the sterile spaceships and stations where he'd spent most of his life.

  Sarah moved forward to pat one of the piles of hay. She pointed to it, then to him; he tensed, starting to raise his hand in a defensive gesture, but this time he arrested the automatic response in mid-motion. As before, Sarah seemed unbothered, clearly unaware he had started to point a weapon at her. She touched her chest, pointed to the door, then pointed at him again, and to the pile of hay.

  "I should stay here, right?" he asked, though he knew she couldn't understand him. He pointed at himself, and at the pile of hay.

  Sarah vigorously bobbed her head. At least half the humanoid species of the galaxy had a gesture of affirmation like that, including Rei's own people. Some used it for negation, but she was smiling that infectious smile, so probably it meant "yes."

  "Leyt," Sarah said, pointing to the electric switch and then to the light bulb overhead. "Leyt." She mimed flicking something up and down before touching the switch, plunging them into darkness, and turned it back on. "Leyt."

  "Leyt," Rei dutifully repeated. It could be the local word for off/on, for electricity, or for the light itself. Either way, he got that she was telling him how to turn it off.

  Sarah smiled again. She said something incomprehensible while pointing to herself and to the door, then held up her hand with all five fingers spread. With another smile, she turned quickly and went out the door.

  Rei followed her and tested the door. She had not locked him in, and the door had a simple latch mechanism operated with a lever-like handle, easy enough to figure out. Rei cracked it open and peered out. He caught a glimpse of bobbing dark blonde hair and the pale collar of her coat as she jogged toward another structure nearby, a house of some kind.

  She might intend to call the Galateans, having recognized him as a deserter. Or perhaps she was going to summon this world's authorities, which would amount to the same thing if they were in touch with Galatea.

  Sarah glanced over her shoulder, and waved her arms wildly with an expression of alarm. She pointed to the house, then to him, and emphatically mimed closing the door.

  Rei did so.

  She wasn't going to sell him out. He would bet money on it in any of the gambling games common among the war-slaves. She wanted him to hide. She did not want him to be seen from the house.

  She was helping him.

  He still didn't know why.

  Rather than sitting down, he walked slowly around the interior of the structure, exploring. Movement helped activate the repair nanites, which weren't going to expend as much energy on an inert soldier as a mobile, functional one. Everything hurt, but he was used to pushing through pain.

  The outbuilding was a large one with a dirt floor, smelling of animals and dust, cluttered with tools and junk that offered many opportunities for improvised weapons. He automatically located the exits, which consisted of another small door like the one Sarah had used and a wide set of double doors for animals or equipment. Everything in sight was mechanical with large, clunky parts and not the slightest hint of nanite tech or computers. The most advanced technology in view, other than the lights, was a big piece of farm equipment with large wheels and an engine, or what he guessed was an engine, made up of large, heavy components gleaming with oil and grease. There were other engines, partly disassembled, and some cut lumber, and more tools. Clearly this building served many of the farm's construction and repair needs.

  A ladder led up to the shadowed loft. Rei climbed it, wincing; this was a lot harder with his injuries than just walking around. Above the main floor of the structure
, he found a large space containing hay and assorted items such as boxes and broken pieces of furniture. One end was open to the night.

  This place wasn't defensible in the slightest. At least it had a lot of options for escape.

  A high-pitched crying sound from the shadows made him jump and extend his hand in the useless defensive stance again. The creature that emerged from the shadows of the loft was surprisingly familiar, a small gray and white cat.

  "Huh," Rei said, lowering his hand.

  Felines were one of the Birthworld species that had been sampled by the Founders and used to populate the galaxy, so a lot of the worlds that had humans also had cats. Since he wasn't sure if it was unmodified or had been given offensive capabilities such as venom, he left it alone. It followed him down the ladder with surprising ease, navigating handily from rung to rung, and trailed him at a discreet distance as he explored the rest of the barn's main floor, poking into the corners he hadn't gotten around to yet.

  He had thought the slatted stalls along one side of the barn were empty, but one of them turned out to contain a hoofed animal, lying down, that resembled one of the centaurish Hnee people from the shoulders down. He'd never seen the whole animal that the Hnee had been made from. It turned its head toward him, pricking its ears forward, and made an inquiring noise, blowing its breath out.

  "Just exploring," Rei told it quietly.

  An enclosure at one end of the barn turned out to contain several dozen fluffy domestic birds, with their own exit to the farmyard. They crooned at him sleepily when he opened their door. The cat seemed very intrigued by this. Rei pushed it back with his foot and closed the birds' door.

  There was nothing else downstairs except animal feed and junk. Rei climbed back up to the loft and walked carefully across the treacherous floor—it was made of boards with gaps between; in places he could see down into the barn below—to look out the open end.

  From here he could see that the clear, stark white light was coming from a light at the top of a pole in the yard. It lit up a pasture lined with trees, where some other animals of different sizes were bedded down for the night. Through the trees, he glimpsed the lights of neighboring houses or farms. None were close, but he made a note that they might still be able to see him if he wasn't careful.

  An approaching rumble made him tense up, recognizing a similar sound to the engine of Sarah's vehicle. But it passed without slowing down, somewhere out of sight on the same road they'd driven to get here.

  He hadn't seen any flying vehicles so far. Was it possible they only had land travel?

  Somehow he was going to have to get himself back to space. If this planet didn't have native space travel, repairing the battlepod was his only option, unless he wanted to build a spaceship from scratch, using the primitive tools in the barn.

  Or I could live on this world for the rest of my life ...

  It didn't look like a bad world to live on. The cool temperate climate was compatible with Polaran life. There were forests, and there were animals similar enough to the ones he was familiar with that he could probably eat them without poisoning himself. If all the natives looked like Sarah, he couldn't pass as one of them so he'd have to avoid them, but that didn't sound so bad. He could live in the woods by himself.

  Leaving Lyr all alone, out there where the war was still going on ...

  But there was no war here. No Galateans. No slave collars—which reminded him of his own collar, a presence so familiar he hardly even felt it anymore. He fingered it, worried. He needed to find a way to cut it off as soon as possible, in case it wasn't permanently disabled and still contained some kind of tracker. The idea of the Galateans being able to reassert control over the collar sent an icy chill through him.

  He was free for the first time since he was nine. He wasn't going back.

  Also, with the collar off, he could shift again without explicit permission—not just the claws and teeth, but his entire self. He could have his wolf back.

  His whole body shuddered, for an instant, with desperate want.

  A light blinked on suddenly outside the house. Jolted out of his thoughts, Rei looked down at Sarah's head of dark blonde hair as she trotted back toward the barn, carrying a bundle in her arms.

  He didn't want to be caught lurking in the loft, so he scrambled down the ladder, landing with a painful jolt that made one of his legs nearly buckle under him. His knee must have been twisted in the crash. He wished he could run a proper diagnostic on himself, but everything seemed to be down except his most basic nanite self-repair functions.

  There was a sharp tapping before the door opened and Sarah pushed her way inside, using her elbow and shoulder since her arms were full. She'd changed out of her wet clothes into a thick, fuzzy shirt and a different pair of the blue, ridged trousers that must be customary garb of her people.

  She greeted him with a smile and cheerful babbling in her own language. She was so—open. So happy. He wasn't used to being around people like that. It made him want to avoid her clear, open gaze, as if she could see into his soul and see how twisted and damaged it was.

  Were all of her people like that, or had she led an unusually sheltered life?

  At the very least, these people didn't live in fear. He'd seen no sign of walls or defenses around the farm, not even any signs of the frequent small-scale warfare prevalent on his native planet.

  Sarah was still smiling at him, looking at him with her bright blue-gray eyes, fringed with sandy lashes, and holding out her soft bundle at him. She gave it a little shake.

  Hesitantly he took it. When he started to unroll it, more items dropped out. Sarah giggled and then covered her mouth with her hand, making apologetic noises.

  She had brought him a large, fuzzy blanket. Wrapped up in it were some clothes of the same general manufacture as the ones she was wearing, a large open-fronted shirt with a red and blue striped pattern and some trousers like hers, but larger.

  The smart-fabric of his jumpsuit was dry enough, so he put the shirt on over it. He wasn't particularly bothered by cold—being Polaran, he was inured to it, and anyway, ignoring discomfort was second nature by now. But he was shivering, and warming up his body would allow his healing to concentrate on his injuries rather than on keeping him warm. He'd spent too long on space stations and ships; he no longer knew how to deal with the changeable weather of a planet's surface.

  She'd brought him boots as well, but he left his feet bare. He was used to walking barefoot around the ship, and the dirt-and-gravel floor of the barn felt good on his soles, another echo of his childhood.

  Sarah had vanished off to a different part of the barn while he put the shirt on, but now she returned, holding out her hands with some packaged objects in them. She squatted down and started spreading things in front of her. Looking up, she spoke again, beckoning him with her hand.

  Rei crouched down awkwardly as she tore open one of the paper packets. It contained soft fabric squares. She held these out toward him. He just stared at her, baffled.

  Sarah sighed; exasperation, it seemed, was the same the galaxy over. As she unscrewed the top of a bottle, Rei found himself entranced with the slant of her lashes, the soft curve of her freckle-dusted cheek. It must be exhaustion. Just as he'd lost himself in exploring the barn, now he was lost in the springy curls brushing her cheek, the pinkness of her lower lip as she pursed her lips in concentration ...

  Sarah cleared her throat, getting his attention. The open bottle released a sharp, pungent smell, and when she pressed one of the cloth squares to its mouth and turned it briefly upside down, dark orange-red fluid saturated the cloth. She dabbed the fluid on the back of her hand, then held it out to him again and pointed at the side of his face.

  Oh.

  This looked nothing like the medicine he'd grown used to—injectors, spray sealant, nanites. But it was not unlike the primitive first aid methods of his childhood planet.

  He didn't know how to explain to her that his injuries would heal
more quickly and readily if he just let the nanites do their work. After the third time he batted her hand away, Sarah gave up in visible frustration. She recapped the bottle and left her primitive medical supplies spread out on the floor. A few gestures to the supplies and to him got the point across: he was welcome to use them if he wanted.

  Saying something, she led the way to the nearest pile of hay, carrying the blanket. She spread it on the hay and patted it.

  "Yeah, I get it," he said. "Bed here. Yes."

  She seemed to understand that, or at least he got another smile out of her. She smiled so easily. What would it be like, to be so free with emotional gestures?

  And now she was talking again. She liked to talk, it seemed. He didn't mind; she had a pleasant voice, even if he couldn't understand a word.

  It took him a moment to realize that she'd repeated the last set of sounds a couple of times, looking at him with her big blue-gray eyes as if she expected it to mean something to him. He'd been distracted by—Actually, he wasn't sure what was distracting him. He'd just drifted, listening to the pleasant cadence of her voice.

  She said it again.

  "Goodnight?" he echoed.

  "Goodnight," she said again, smiling at him, and backed up to the door, making him realize the words were a ritual goodbye of some kind. With another smile, she said something else, and then "Goodnight!" again, and left quickly.

  Rei waited until he could no longer hear her footsteps before testing the door handle again. It opened just as before. He was not locked in. No point, really, with so many exits to the building she'd put him in. If she wanted to make him a prisoner, surely she would have chosen somewhere more defensible.