Metal Wolf

by Lauren Esker

  A couple went past them in the dark, neither in costume, close together with their arms around each other's waists. After they were gone, Sarah said, "I'm sorry. I'm hogging the conversation since you can't talk much in public."

  "I don't mind," he answered quietly. "I really like hearing it. You don't talk about yourself much."

  "I don't?" She leaned into him, enjoying the warmth as much as the contact. She was going to have to go back to the truck for her jacket soon.

  "You do when I ask. You just don't volunteer information much."

  He fell silent again as another pedestrian approached, a young man in a plaid jacket walking quickly, head down and hands shoved in his pockets. As he went by without slowing, Sarah marveled at how completely unafraid she was. Walking in a city park at night would normally have had her on high alert, fearing muggers and rapists behind every bush. But she'd seen what Rei could do with those bracelets he wore. With Rei beside her, she feared nothing.

  "Pot, kettle," she remarked, and he gave her a curious look. "Sorry. Earth saying, I guess it didn't translate. What I meant was, you don't talk about yourself much either, unless I ask. But I understand why, and I guess ... I guess I feel like my life is so boring compared to yours. I'm just a farm kid from flyover country. You've been so many places and done so many things. How could stories about stargazing at the lake or Christmas shopping in a city that's tiny even by my planet's standards have any interest for you?"

  "Sarah, I love hearing you tell me about yourself." He stopped and turned to face her, taking her other hand in his. "Everything about you is interesting to me. I'm the one who—" He stopped, his gleaming, reflective eyes focusing past her.

  "What?" she asked, stepping closer to him and looking over her shoulder. They weren't entirely alone; a homeless person was digging in a trash container a little way down the bike path, and there were a couple of costumed partygoers in the park up ahead, visible mainly as silhouettes with fake cat ears sticking up against the light.

  "I don't know," Rei murmured. "It's probably nothing, but ... step back into the shadows here."

  She obeyed, allowing Rei to draw her into the inky darkness under the trees. Until now, she hadn't realized how well suited Rei's natural coloring was for night camouflage, the deep blue of his skin vanishing completely in the dark. The white dots she'd painted on for his Avatar costume had mostly rubbed off by now, and even his red sweater's vivid color was leeched to charcoal in the dim light. He was visible only by the glimmer of his reflective eyes and the fainter iridescence of the tsinde spots, picking out the line of his jaw and cheekbones when he turned his head.

  By comparison she felt terribly exposed in her light-colored, flowered dress and long pink wig. She must look like a pale blur against the dark, where Rei was just another shadow in a night filled with them.

  "What did you see?" she whispered.

  "I don't know. That couple up there ..." He indicated the costumed pair. "Your people aren't normally that tall or broad."

  "I think they're just bulked out because of the costumes." It looked like they were both wearing furry body suits. Smart, on a cold evening like this one, though they'd probably die of heatstroke if they went inside and try to dance. Still, they must be more comfortable right now than she was.

  "I wish they'd step closer to one of the lights." Rei's voice was the barest murmur, stirring the strands of the wig above her ear. "My night vision is good, but all the lights around here make it hard for my eyes to dilate properly."

  As if in answer to his comment, the pair did exactly that, moving over toward one of the lampposts illuminating the park. One of them was checking his phone, hands cupped around the glow of the screen.

  Except no, his hands were ... empty? As they moved under the light, she caught the bright flash of bracelets around his wrist, around both their wrists. The costumed man was fiddling with one of his bracelets in a way that was very familiar to her from having seen Rei do it.

  The streetlight illuminated tawny fur on both of them, one leopard-spotted, the other tiger-striped. They both wore armless coveralls of a type that was as familiar as the bracelets, although these were dark blue rather than gray, and each had a belt around the waist.

  Next to her, she felt Rei's whole body go stiff.

  "Are those Galateans?" she whispered, but she'd spent too much time looking at Rei's drawing of his dead Galatean friend—the cat-spotted fur, the ears—not to know the answer even as the words left her mouth.

  15

  ___

  I T WAS WEIRD HAVING the house all to himself again, after getting used to Sarah and her alien beau being around 24/7. Gary hardly knew what to do with himself.

  He didn't want to work on the ship without Rei—and anyway, he had a feeling they were running up against the limits of what they could do with the tools they had. He'd machined new parts to replace as many as possible of the damaged ones, but some of those materials were things he'd never seen before, didn't even know what they were.

  He thought Rei was coming around to the same decision Gary had reached awhile back, that they couldn't fix the ship using what they had to work with.

  Gary wasn't sure how he felt about that. He liked the alien kid, and more importantly, the kid made Sarah happy. The poor girl hadn't given half a thought to her own happiness in longer than Gary wanted to think about. Rei made her happier than Gary had seen her in years.

  But he had to think about her future, and what kind of future was there for her with a guy who could never go out in public except once a year, who they had to keep hidden all the time? Gary didn't mind—hell, he'd do anything if it meant keeping his little girl happy—but it didn't seem like much of a life for either of them.

  Still, Sarah was an adult, and if being with Rei made her light up like it did, who was he to judge?

  And it was awfully quiet with both of them gone.

  He drifted around the house after they left, did some dishes, put out the bowl of candy in case any kids came by (they didn't get many trick-or-treaters, but a few of the neighbors had little ones and at least one of them usually stopped in). He'd finished machining the bracket for Rei's ship and checked to make sure it fit. He felt like he should take the opportunity to work on one of his own projects, but everything seemed dull compared to fixing an alien spaceship.

  He was idly channel-surfing, looking for something better than game shows and old movies he'd already seen, when there was a brisk knock on the front door—not the kitchen door, which meant city folks, not neighbors. Gary levered himself off the couch, grabbed one walking stick (didn't really need both in the house) and limped over to answer it.

  It had grown dark outside, a mist settling around the yard lights. A woman stood on the porch under the light bulb that he'd left on for trick-or-treaters. She was a few years older than Sarah, with thick dark hair pulled back in a ponytail and a badge held up where he could see it.

  "Gary Metzger?"

  "Yes, ma'am. And you are?" He kept the door cracked halfway where he could shut it fast if he needed to. There was a dark sedan parked behind her in the driveway, and a man leaning on it. Looked like just the two of them.

  "Agent Anita Pradhan, Homeland Security. Do you have a few minutes, sir?"

  "My show's about to come on," Gary hedged.

  "This will only take a moment. I need to ask you some questions. May I come in?"

  "What's this about? Am I in some kind of trouble?" He tried to sound baffled, playing "dumb farmer from the sticks" as hard as he could. The more this city lady underestimated him, the better.

  "You're not in trouble, sir. We're just asking some routine questions. May I come in?"

  He was strongly tempted to tell her "no." She couldn't force her way in without a warrant, not legally, at least. But he also didn't want to send up any flags that would make her take a closer look. Didn't want to give her a reason to go get that warrant and come back. At least Sarah and Rei were out.

  "Yeah, guess
that'd be all right," he said.

  He held the door for her. She glanced back at her partner, but didn't invite him along. Gary took a quick glance around the living room, just to make sure there was nothing incriminating in sight, but the nice thing about Rei not really coming with much in the way of luggage was that he didn't leave a lot lying around.

  "Coffee?"

  "Sure," Agent Pradhan said. "Thanks."

  She looked around with sharp eyes. Gary kept his own eyes roaming and alert as he limped through the living room to the kitchen, looking in particular for any telltale signs that the house was occupied by more than two people. Nothing stood out. The dishes were washed and in their rack, thanks to his earlier cleaning spree. He dumped the dregs of the old coffee and measured out a scoop for a new pot.

  "Just have a seat. This won't take but a minute." He glanced over his shoulder and noticed that she was still standing. "So what's all this about?"

  "A few routine questions, that's all. We think a fugitive may be in the area and we're asking around to see if anyone's seen anything suspicious. Have you seen any signs of an unfamiliar person in the area? Items missing, someone sleeping in an outbuilding, perhaps?"

  "Nope. Nothing like that. This is a quiet town, ma'am." He wondered if it'd be suspicious to ask his own questions in return, decided it would look even odder not to. "Is this to do with all that business going on over at the lake?"

  "I'm afraid I can't comment on that, Mr. Metzger."

  "Course not. Sorry I asked." He fitted the coffeepot back onto its base. "You talk to the Mullers yet? Heard they had a homeless fella sleeping in their barn a few weeks back."

  "I'll look into it," Agent Pradhan said in a polite way that suggested it had already been looked into. "Thank you for the tip. Have you seen anything yourself, heard anything perhaps? Odd lights in the pasture, tracks, animals acting strange?"

  "Nope, nothin' like ... that."

  As he turned away from the coffeepot, his eye fell on the mounting bracket he had been working on earlier. He'd left both it and the original sitting on the counter.

  Which wasn't really a problem by itself. The replacement was just a piece of aluminum he'd milled into the right shape, and while the original was made of some glossy metal he didn't recognize, there was nothing about it to set off warning lights. It just looked like an engine part. He had 'em everywhere. He'd had to pick a rebuilt carburetor out of the candy bowl earlier in the evening so he didn't accidentally hand it to some unsuspecting eight-year-old.

  No, the problem was that he'd needed to make sure the part fit, so he'd brought in the doodlyhickey it attached to, a little glass tubey thing with a spill of what looked like flexible fiber-optic cables coming off in all directions. And the whole thing was all put together on the countertop.

  It still didn't look that weird, he told himself. Not to someone who didn't know much about electronics. Girl was a townie. She'd probably never taken apart her car's engine or rewired a fuse box. What was she gonna guess?

  Nothin', as long as he didn't keep staring at it. Agent Pradhan clearly wasn't an idiot, and when his gaze had dropped to the object on the counter, hers had gone to it as if pulled along by magnets.

  "Coffee's gonna be a minute," he said, moving quickly to open a cabinet for mugs—and put his body between her and the incriminating object on the counter. "Cream and sugar, ma'am?"

  "Cream, no sugar." Agent Pradhan moved in smoothly, and Gary gave way, because he couldn't block her without making a big deal about it. She reached for the object on the countertop. "This is very interesting-looking. Do you mind if I ask what it is?"

  "Step-down capacitors from the starter motor on a '78 Lister diesel generator," Gary said promptly, without pausing to plan or think. All he knew was, a hesitation would've been worse. Baffle them with bullshit, as one of his high school friends used to say, back in the days when they used to sneak cigarettes and cans of beer, and lie to the adults about it.

  The problem with bullshit was that it did smell. If she knew much about engines, he'd just made her even more suspicious.

  But there was no reaction. Either she didn't know enough to recognize that what he'd just described wasn't an actual thing, or she had the world's best poker face. "Interesting," she remarked, and put it back down. "You're good with your hands, I take it."

  "Something breaks on the farm, you fix it. And since it's useful to be able to, I like taking engines apart to figure out how they work." He grinned at her and reached for the coffeepot, which had finished percolating. "Hey, you want to hear about the hydro project I got goin' at an old ruin of a gristmill on the edge of the place? If it wasn't dark out there, I'd walk you over and show you. Gonna convert that thing to power this whole farm, maybe sell some power back to the utility company, even."

  "It sounds fascinating," Pradhan said politely. "Perhaps later."

  "You come back anytime you want to see it. Now, you said cream—?" He started to turn toward the fridge, and froze with a suddenness that he couldn't possibly disguise this time at the sight of light out the back window. Light shining from the cracks and windows in the barn, and a light about the size of a flashlight beam bouncing toward the house.

  And Gary realized he was the biggest fuckin' idiot in the county.

  Here he'd been worrying about Pradhan, and he'd just assumed the other agent would stay with the car.

  There was a polite tap on the back door. Gary moved to open it, but Pradhan got there first. Her partner came in, flashlight in one hand, and in the other ...

  Gary recognized it immediately. It was Sarah's old telescope, tucked under the other agent's arm, the one she'd lost out at the lake.

  "You should go have a look in the barn," the male agent said quietly to Pradhan.

  "You need a warrant for that," Gary said tightly. He never should've let them in. He should've turned them away, suspicion be damned. It would have taken them time to come back with a warrant. They could have moved the ship somewhere else, hidden it under a tarp at least ...

  "Interesting that you assume we don't already have one," the male agent said. He set the telescope on the table with a clunk. "Recognize this?"

  "Couldn't say," Gary said, heart beating fast, because he'd just noticed the neat row of letters scratched along the telescope's body in his daughter's handwriting.

  SARAH M. METZGER.

  Because of course Sarah had been the sort of child who meticulously labeled her things.

  ***

  They'd found him.

  Ice rushed through Rei's veins, a sick cold spasm that choked him, closing off his airway and making him lightheaded. Spots danced in his vision.

  "Are they Galateans?" Sarah whispered, and it was her voice, along with the innocence of her question, that shocked him enough to fight back the cold fist of panic closing around his lungs.

  He couldn't let them get Sarah. Couldn't let them find out about the farm.

  They weren't looking in his direction yet. He reached mentally for his cuffs, making sure they were on their lowest power-saving setting. Maybe some process running in the background had pinged a Galatean server and alerted them to his location. Maybe they'd just tracked the pod's incoming trajectory, spread out over the surrounding countryside, and gotten lucky.

  They were making no attempt to hide, even when another Earth human walked quickly through the park bound on some unknown errand, which meant they, too, had figured out that a night when everyone went abroad in costume was a perfect night for aliens to walk openly on a hitherto uncontacted planet.

  Or was it uncontacted? Perhaps Sarah's government had been in touch with the Galateans for years, unknown to most of their people.

  None of that mattered now. The important thing was getting away without attracting their attention.

  Far, far away.

  "Be quiet, as quiet as you can," he whispered.

  Sarah nodded. She didn't ask again. It seemed that she'd figured out the answer on her own.

&
nbsp; Slowly and quietly, Rei began to retreat, staying in the shadows and trying to maintain a slow enough pace that Sarah, too, could be stealthy in darkness that her eyes couldn't penetrate. He could have gone much faster on his own, but he wasn't about to leave her alone, not with Galateans nearby.

  He was still holding Sarah's hand. Her fingers felt very warm and steady on his own, and he realized his hand was shaking and tried to make it still.

  "Good God," Sarah whispered. Rei looked up quickly, but the Galateans still weren't looking in their direction. An Earth human had just passed the Galatean pair, jogging slowly in a way that Rei had already seen a few of them doing since he and Sarah had been in the park; it seemed to be a common form of exercise on her planet. This human was male, a full head and a half shorter than the Galateans, barely coming up to their shoulders.

  "Rei, you didn't tell me Galateans are huge."

  He decided not to tell her those two were actually on the short side. The Galateans must have picked agents who could blend more easily with this world's humans ... which also suggested some familiarity with the local humans already.

  How many were here? There must be a ship in orbit. Not a full-sized battle cruiser, surely, just to capture an escaped slave. It was probably a smaller ship, a barque or a chaser-class ship. Most likely a chaser; they were small, fast ships used for courier work and small, stealthy missions—like, say, recapturing an escaped slave without attracting too much attention.

  A chaser would have a detachment of around six or eight soldiers. None of them were likely to be authorized to take extraordinary measures or possess heavy battle armor. They would be moving fast and light, trying to conceal their presence on this world and get off with a minimum of fuss.

  Unfortunately, they would still be well trained, competent, and hard to bribe. A fellow slave soldier might be convinced to look the other way, but chaser crews were usually Galatean citizen soldiers who trained as a unit. For them, he was a mission. And part of the Galatean warrior ethic was pride in a mission well done.