Forms of Love

by Rita Clay Estrada

  Taking a calming breath, Dan began again. “Try to take a stand, here, honey, and let me know your thoughts on this weapon’s possibilities.”

  Kendra brushed an invisible speck from the seat between them. “You don’t have to get angry with me. Herfronites are logical and telepathic. That doesn’t mean they have all the answers.”

  “I’m not angry,” he declared, his blue eyes blazing with just-denied emotion. “I’m simply asking for an educated guess about the man who wants to kill us. After all, he’s from your planet, not mine. You know something and you’re unwilling to tell me what it is.”

  Kendra sighed and looked down at her broken nail. Surprisingly, it had begun to grow. Odd to think how many human attributes she was acquiring....

  “Stick with me on this, Kendra,” Dan prompted. “What weapons?”

  He was reading her almost as well as she could read him. She was delaying the inevitable. “The one I’m thinking about is something that looks similar to a television remote control and works very much like a laser. If it’s in proper running condition and put on the right controls, it can either stun someone for a minute or so, or kill them. It can even turn a body into dust immediately. It’s like a beam of light that is so strong it can eat through any nonreflective material in a matter of milliseconds.”

  Dan whistled. “Every man’s dream. The ultimate remote control.”

  “But I’m not sure that Cowboy would have one of those.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they’re so intricate and dangerous there are only a handful of Herfronites who carry them. I’ve only worked them once or twice in training. We didn’t even receive one when we came here.”

  “He’s probably got one, then. After all, his prime purpose is to keep you in line.”

  Instead of answering, she grew thoughtful. How unusual. She always felt so calm, knowing the absolute social and lawful parameters handed her by the Elders. Now, in the less-than-two weeks she’d been on earth, she had also learned to be her own person, and that was becoming even more confusing. Perhaps it was because she’d never completely absorbed the original Kendra’s memory. To compensate, her own personality filled those emotional holes, creating an entirely different person from the one she was or the one she pretended to be. The new person was the Kendra she was now.

  And with this knowledge came an awareness that Herfron might not be the perfect world she’d portrayed it to be. Rethinking those same walls and rules, she now realized there might have been two sets of rules—one for her kind, and one for the Elders. So many things she’d thought to be true had been proved different this past week and a half. Could her own perception of her people be wrong, too?

  She’d certainly been taught wrong about the people of Earth. They were not always a demanding, destructive race without the ability to think logically. Their sun was warm on the skin and they reveled in it. Their colors were vivid and they wore them as decoration as well as lived surrounded by them. Their building skills were superb and it showed in buildings, homes and bridges as well as in parks, playgrounds and recreation facilities. Adaptability seemed to be a byword, and human ingenuity showed it in the thousands of different everyday products available. They might be babies in their ignorance of the universe, but that wasn’t where their drive for knowledge was focused—unlike Herfronites. And in recognizing these differences, she also felt the guilt of not being loyal to the very people who gave her the opportunity to know the differences.

  But she had to admit that knowledge aloud. It was the correct Herfron thing to do. “I might have been just a little naive about Earth and humans at the beginning of this trip, but I’m catching on quickly.”

  “Really?” he asked dryly. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Don’t get smart, Dan, or I’ll erase your memory,” she threatened, but her voice held a teasing quality.

  “Can you erase bits and pieces?”

  “No. Alas, it’s all or nothing.”

  “Then I’ll behave.” He shot her a grin, but there was an emotional distance in his gaze. “At least until we get Cowboy off my back and you have a chance to return to your own planet, since that’s your plan.”

  Even though that was her ultimate goal, it hurt to hear him say those words. As much as she needed to get back to her people and share what she’d learned, she hated leaving him.

  Instead of voicing those feelings, Kendra nodded. But her gaze took in his profile and indelibly sketched it in her memory. Instead of making him look scruffy, his two-day-old beard reminded her of the pictures of dangerous pirates she’d seen. He could even pose for one of the romance novels on the stands in supermarkets and drugstores. His nose was straight, his eyes held delightful crinkles that women would have lamented were crow’s-feet. He was a very good-looking man; one any woman would be proud to be with—most of all, her.

  That thought surprised her. Was she thinking she was woman first? They didn’t have names for male and female on her planet. Everyone was simply Herfronite. Everyone was equal. How odd.

  Dan’s arm stretched across the top of the seat and his fingers nestled in the nape of her neck. “Thank you,” he said.

  “How did you malk what I was thinking?” she asked, startled at how complicated her feelings were becoming—especially when she knew she was being read by him. She thought she’d blocked. Now she had an idea how he felt when she did it to him.

  “You were staring at me with a small smile on your heavenly mouth. I gathered you were thinking about me and it was either pleasant or kind. I chose to think it was kind.”

  Kendra’s shoulders relaxed. “Oh.” Her skills at blocking were still intact.

  He withdrew his hand and she felt bereft of his warmth. But she refused to reach out and take it back. That would set her up for rejection.

  Dan’s words interrupted her reverie. “Humans have ways of reading people too, Kendra, and it’s not always bad.”

  “I never said it was.” Her speech was stiff. Her body even more so. She clamored for his masculine touch, and the more she wanted to be with him, the more she feared her own emotions and retreated from him.

  “You didn’t have to. No matter what we are, honey, we aren’t inferior, just different.”

  “Really?” She raised a brow and looked him over. “I never noticed.”

  He grinned, knowing her dander was up and loving it. “Yes, you did, and you pointed it out all the time.”

  Kendra stared out the window, not saying a word. He could just guess where her thoughts were leading, but she’d be damned if she’d tell him.

  Dan pulled into a small gas station just outside a charming Victorian town the sign proclaimed was Gonzales. He stepped from the car and Kendra watched carefully as he handed the owner a credit card and started pumping gas. This was risky, since their car might have been reported stolen. Kendra caught the thought that the older gentleman had a citizens-band radio in the office. When business was slow he picked up truckers’ signals from the highway.

  She was about to delve into the rest of the station owner’s thoughts when a highway patrol car pulled up behind them. Holding her breath, she searched for Dan. His body was stiff with tension, his motions jerky. Mentally she reached out to him, soothing his thoughts with the promise that she would find out what he needed to know. Once he was calmed, Kendra turned her talents on the policeman.

  The young man was angry about something his wife had done that morning. It wasn’t really important except that she’d always done it and it had always irritated him. He’d taken the police car home last night and hadn’t seen the official list of things he was supposed to do at the office until just a few minutes ago. Everyone seemed to be dumping on him.

  But when he looked at the license plate, Kendra knew that something was wrong—although the man never put his thoughts into words other than a very succinct Damn! He walked over to Dan before Kendra had a chance to prepare him, and began talking. Dan looked surprised, then angry. But whatever
was going on, she felt he was carrying it off.

  By the time he got into the car Kendra could barely suppress her own curiosity. Both Dan and the policeman had done a very effective job of blocking her, and what little she had understood didn’t make sense.

  “What was that all about?” she asked.

  “We’ve got a Handicapped license plate.” Dan spat the words through clenched teeth.

  She wasn’t sure what that was or what it had to do with their problem. “But what did the policeman want?”

  “He wanted to make sure we didn’t use a special parking place unless there was a handicapped person in the car. We weren’t supposed to take advantage of the emblem.”

  She felt as if she was waiting for a punch line, but Dan was quiet. “That’s it?”

  Dan nodded, still staring into his rearview mirror.

  “Then let’s get out of here.” She leaned back, wanting as much space between Dan and the policeman as she could get. Meanwhile, if she was going to protect him, she had to make some changes.

  “My sentiments, exactly.”

  Kendra didn’t relax until they were ten miles outside of town on old Highway 90 heading toward southwest Houston.

  “Dan, leave me at the outskirts of Houston,” Kendra requested in a firm voice.

  Dan’s voice was equally firm. “No way. You’re with me to the end, honey.”

  “It isn’t logical,” she argued. This is your world, you need to function in it. If I’m not around you, Dirk will be torn on how to search. That will give you time to hide. Whatever, we need to be separate to improve our chances.”

  “Herfronite logic doesn’t always work on Earth, darlin’. If Cowboy found my Jeep, which I think he did, then he knows exactly where I live. My insurance papers are in the glove compartment with my address printed all over them. He’ll know where we’re heading and what possible routes to take. And he won’t hesitate to use deadly and immediate force.”

  “I didn’t know,” she said softly, surprised that insurance papers would be kept in a car while all other records were kept in courthouses on microfiche—or so she’d been taught. Her lessons hadn’t gone far enough, obviously. There was so much to learn and so little time to learn it. “If that’s the case, wouldn’t it be more logical to go somewhere else to hide?”

  “Houston is my territory, honey. Cowboy is out of his element there. If I went to another city, we’d both be out of our element and neither of us would have an advantage.” He looked at her, his sharp eyes taking in her white face as she realized how dangerous their situation was. “Mark my words, this is a fight to the death—for the both of us. He won’t stop until we’re dead and we won’t be able to live without fear until he’s gone. Either way, someone will die.”

  “No.”

  Dan didn’t respond. He knew she was denying the violence. But there was no other way.

  Kendra found herself praying with every turn in the road. She prayed that they would all get out alive, but most of all, that Dan would live and love again. He deserved it. With all the bad things that had happened in his life, he deserved a love that knew no end.

  Kendra opened her mouth to argue, then tensed. She’d felt a probe again. “Get ready,” she said quickly, then shifted her mind to the bland, gray countryside of her own planet. She could feel Dan’s body tense as he readied for the first onslaught.

  With a deliberateness bred into her from birth, she soothed her own emotions. It was the best she could do under the circumstances. She was so filled with love for Dan and fear for both their lives. The probe, weak as it was, came again.

  Dan’s foot was heavy on the gas pedal as they sped through another small town. She was going to tell him to slow down but was afraid to put it into words. The probe would come again, she was sure, and she needed all her concentration to filter it through without allowing it to pick up on her or Dan.

  She took a deep breath and concentrated hard. She was ready. Shock filled her senses, stilling her quickly beating heart.

  The probe was not Cowboy.

  “Slow down,” Kendra ordered quietly.

  It took Dan a minute to register what she’d said and lightly step on the brake.

  “Stop,” she told him. “Pull to the side of the road.”

  Dan’s brows lifted almost to his hairline. He looked at her, then back at the road. “Are you crazy? I don’t have a suicide wish, and I won’t let you have one, either.”

  “Please, do as I say,” she said, trying desperately to keep the weak connection.

  Cursing under his breath, Dan pulled to the shoulder of the road and sat tensely, watching Kendra. He hoped he could catch a thought in midstream and save her from the pain. Instead, she ignored him and focused on malking.

  Minutes ticked by as slowly as hours for Dan and he fidgeted in his seat while he waited impatiently. Kendra tuned out completely, focusing only on the person she was relating to.

  And she was amazed.

  The malker was a man planting a field nearby. He’d been on Earth for over nine years, having come here as part of a farming experiment she’d never heard of. He was a Kau, a second-generation Herfronite, and wished he was as far along genetically as she was. According to him, his short legs and heaviness, typical in a Herfronite, were a detriment on Earth. Because of his internal differences, doctors considered him to be an oddity. He was only glad he wasn’t color-blind, like the Elders.

  There were others, he said. They had found a way to live with humans without the Guardians finding them. They didn’t call attention to themselves or keep in touch. Each had formed his own underground connections and they met occasionally. But that was all. No one wanted more than to be human and to be left alone. When the Guardians found them—which happened occasionally—they disappeared.

  Dan picked up a stray thought or two and was just as shocked as Kendra. Was the whole world going crazy?

  She asked the farmer several questions about the Keepers or Guardians, finally letting him know that one was chasing them. In his years on Earth, no one had ever come after him.

  An instant later, he pulled his thoughts away and closed down any connection between them.

  “What happened?” Dan asked, demanding an answer.

  But Kendra didn’t have one. It was unbelievable to her that some of her kind had stayed here on Earth. Why had the Elders allowed that? Where were the Guardians? Was the farmer right and were there more Mais and Kaus still living in this world? If so, where were they? And what did they do?

  On Herfron there were committees or co-op work programs that benefited all. Many worked for more than one and took joy in the prospect of working so hard. But it was different here; everyone was an individual, doing his or her own “thing,” as they referred to it. How could Herfronites live like humans?

  “Stop looking at the differences, honey,” Dan said, and she knew he was reading her mind. “Look at the similarities.”

  Kendra saw a sign proclaiming Houston as being thirty miles away, but her thoughts were still on their discussion. Dan’s ideas were food, adding to her own newly forming opinions. “I don’t understand, Dan. Everyone here is an individual, a freethinker, yet they act much like Herfronites when they band together for a cause.”

  He shrugged. “I told you we were similar.”

  “Maybe. I’m not sure,” she murmured absently. “Right now, I wonder how many of my kind are here. And why is Cowboy only after us instead of someone like the farmer?”

  “Apparently we teed him off,” Dan stated dryly, but she could tell he’d wondered the same thing. “He has a tail on us, and he knows you’re pregnant.”

  “But why us?”

  “Who knows? We could have ticked him off or his superiors could be angry with him and we’re the most accessible. Or maybe it’s because we ruined an experiment.”

  “My heavens, I never would have believed this could happen. We could be dead because he was able to trace our whereabouts.”

  “But I’
ll see him dead before he harms you.”

  It was stated with such icy-cold, no-nonsense conviction, a chill ran down Kendra’s spine. “That’s not right,” she protested softly. “No one should kill.”

  Dan was about to answer, when the first probe entered his head. As individual as facial features or fingerprints, the probe was identifiable.

  Dan stepped on the gas and raced toward the distant skyline that revealed downtown Houston. He was fighting for their lives.

  Cowboy was back.

  9

  DAN DROVE AT BREAKNECK speed toward the Houston city limits. The narrow, two-lane road they had been traveling blended with another and soon they were speeding up the Southwest Freeway toward a tall clump of buildings on the far horizon.

  Cowboy’s probe, now gone, had been weak. But it had been a chilling reminder that he was still hot on their trail. The time for confrontation was approaching fast.

  Kendra rested her hand on Dan’s thigh as if physical contact with him would keep him safe. She was at a complete loss; it wasn’t just the fear for her life, either. It was her feelings for Dan. Was she in love with him?

  Kendra knew the answer, but refused to acknowledge it aloud.

  She loved him more than her own life.

  She looked at Dan, hoping he would give her some kind of reassurance, some small grain of hope that all would be well.

  There was none.

  White-knuckled fingers clenched the steering wheel. Dan’s face, usually relaxed, was as taut and clenched as Kendra felt. Narrowed eyes gazed into the future. His mouth was uncompromising, his jaw rigid.

  She tried to gently probe his mind but it was closed.

  “Stop it,” he barked.

  Kendra withdrew. “Don’t cut yourself off from me, Dan. Let me in.”

  “Not now, honey. I can’t always be sure it’s you. Cowboy might change his tactics and be gentle enough to slide through my own barriers. Then we’d be dead ducks soon afterward.”

  Dan was an optimist if he seriously thought he could stop the Guardian. “You don’t really think we have a chance against someone like him?”