by Lauren Esker
The stranger said something. Sarah couldn't understand him at all. She spoke a little Spanish from school, and a little German from Grandma Metzger, but it definitely wasn't either of those. His voice was soft and a little baffled and, as far as she could read his intonation, sounded apologetic.
Then he went suddenly limp, like a puppet with its strings cut, and keeled over on the sand.
Sarah stared at him for a long moment. She tried to stand up and fell right back down, her legs were shaking so hard. So she crabwalked backward until she'd made it twenty feet or so up the beach, leaving a trail through the sand. Foreign Test Pilot was nothing but a dark heap at the edge of the water. Farther out, pieces of his shuttle or plane or whatever it was glimmered on the waves as, one by one, they sank out of sight.
Sarah sat for a moment with her arms wrapped around her sodden legs before she forced herself shakily to her feet.
It was time to let someone else handle this.
She was halfway to her truck before she realized that she was missing a couple of vital things, such as her truck keys, and her phone.
Her discarded jacket was lying on the beach some ten or fifteen feet from Asshole Foreign Test Pilot. She retrieved it, keeping her eyes on him the whole time, and felt in the pockets for either of those missing items. All she found was a squashed granola bar and a couple of soggy feed-store receipts.
The phone was big and heavy enough that it had probably washed out of whichever pocket she'd stuck it into. She patted herself down thoroughly while she wobbled toward the truck, finding nothing except some random pocket change and sand.
She clambered into the truck anyway, locked all the doors, and sat shivering behind the wheel.
Okay, something that bright would absolutely have attracted attention from town. The sheriff would be out here soon. All she had to do was wait in the truck.
Her hands were sticky. She opened and closed them. Whatever it was felt warm. Was she bleeding? She reached up and switched on the truck's dome light.
There was something on her hands, all right. It looked like dark blue paint, streaked with water.
How had she got something like that on her? Did it come from his plane?
She turned her hands over, staring at them. Cautiously she raised one hand to her nose and sniffed it. There was no paint smell, just a kind of faint metallic scent that seemed slightly familiar.
Hoping she didn't regret this, she touched her tongue to the back of her hand.
As soon as she tasted it, the familiarity of the smell clicked into place. It was blood.
Blood ... that was blue. Vivid blue. Not veins-under-the-skin blue, but deep indigo paint blue.
Or, at least, it was something blue that tasted and smelled like blood. Butchering season on the farm had left her very familiar with what blood was like. If she closed her eyes, it was indistinguishable.
Sarah wiped her palm on her jeans and got a flashlight out of the truck's glove box. Leaving the truck door open and the dome light on, in case she had need of a hasty escape, she hopped down and walked towards Foreign (Alien?) Test Pilot through the sand.
The feeling of the sand through her wet socks reminded her that she hadn't bothered to stop for her boots in her flight to the truck. She hadn't gone far before she stepped on something hard and pokey.
"Ow!"
She hopped on one foot for a minute, then bent down and felt around until she located her truck keys. They must've fallen out of her pocket during her inglorious escape from being kinda-sorta attacked.
I'm really not thinking very clearly tonight, am I?
But her head was starting to clear as her adrenaline rush and panic faded. And now she was desperately curious.
Foreign Or Alien Test Pilot still lay in a huddled dark shape on the sand. Sarah squatted next to him and shone the light over him.
He was blue, all right.
Not a little blue from being dunked in the cold water. He was actual, full-on, what-the-effing-hell-have-I-gotten-myself-into indigo.
His hair was black, or at least dark enough to look black in the flashlight's beam, very thick and long enough to plaster all over his forehead and neck. He was lying with his cheek pressed into the sand and his body twisted to the side. On the visible sliver of his face, the flashlight's beam reflected off a pattern of gold dots, starting just under his eye and curving down his cheek in a graceful arc.
His muscular shoulders and arms were bare, and glimmered in her flashlight beam with silver threads zigging and zagging all over his skin. Tattoos? She'd heard it was possible to make tattoos with unusual pigments, though having grown up in Sidonie, her experience with tattoos of any kind was limited. More oddly, she could see no sign of the knife he'd held on her. Had it even been a knife? Maybe she had mistaken the edge of his hand for a weapon.
But it had really felt sharp. She'd felt the point of it, pressed against her skin.
He wore a sleeveless jumpsuit of some clingy, gray material. There was a necklace or something around his neck, made of dull silver metal, like pewter or lead. Sarah poked at it hesitantly with a finger. It didn't seem to have any seams; it just ringed his neck like one of those solid bracelets that slides over the hand.
And he had those too, one solid silver-colored bracelet on each wrist. They gleamed under the flashlight with a luster like brushed steel.
His feet were bare. For some reason that was what finally broke through her curiosity and fear, leaving only a deep pity. He just looked so vulnerable like that.
He'd attacked her, she reminded herself.
But he hadn't meant to. She was sure of that. Whoever he was, whatever he was, he'd come to his senses in a strange place, with a stranger touching him and babbling at him in a language he didn't appear to speak. She would probably have tried to attack too. He'd stopped as soon as he'd realized what he was doing.
And he didn't seem to be armed, in spite of whatever she thought she'd felt earlier. It must have been his bare hands.
She looked up at the distant wail of sirens. Sounded like someone had managed to rouse the sheriff from his favorite bar. All down the lake, lights had begun come on at scattered cabins along the shore. Most of the summer people were gone, but there were always a few year-round residents. She could hear voices along the shore from the direction of the now-extinguished bonfire.
Pretty soon, half the town would be out here to check out what was going on.
"Hey there," Sarah whispered, shaking the guy's shoulder. His skin was terribly cold. "Mister? Are you awake?"
By all rights he should be in a hospital, and possibly locked up. But dozens of books and movies about alien contact flooded her mind. Alien autopsies. Area 51. Evil government agents.
You know that's fiction, right? she scolded herself.
But ...
If she let the sheriff's department have him, what were they going to do with him?
He could have alien germs. He could hurt me, or Dad, or the animals. He could ...
He could do any of those things, but he's lost and scared and hurt. If I were stranded on another planet, or escaped from a government lab, or whatever happened to this guy, I'd hope that a friendly alien would find me, instead of some government goons that'd lock me up and poke me to figure out how I work.
"Mister?" she said again, shaking his shoulder. The sirens were getting louder.
Sarah stood up, hooked her hands under his shoulders, and started dragging him toward the truck.
Years of working on the farm, throwing around sacks of feed and hay bales, had left her with flat, strong muscles in her shoulders and stomach. She was able to manage Alien Test Pilot's muscle-heavy bulk okay, though the trail he left where she'd dragged him through the sand made her wince; the sheriff would have to be a total idiot not to notice something had happened here.
Heaving him into the truck through the passenger-side door was considerably harder, but she had helped string up beef cattle at butchering time, and after her dad's ac
cident, she'd done most of the necessary in-home health care, including helping her dad into bed or the shower. This guy was heavier than her dad; he seemed to be made of solid muscle. Still, with effort she got him into the truck, slumped over on the wide bench seat. She climbed in on the driver's side and pushed his head over to make room for her leg.
She really wanted to take a better look at him under the dome light, partly to find out where the blood was coming from, and partly because he was blue. But the sirens were loud now, and the urgent desire not to get caught by the sheriff with an alien in her truck made her stamp on the gas, fishtailing off the beach in a shower of gravel.
She had to slow down on the bumpy dirt road, and then killed her headlights—mouth dry, heart pounding—as red and blue flashing lights tore past on the main road. They didn't even slow down. Must be heading for the main access road to the lake, she guessed. They would find her little access road and the tracks on the beach soon enough, but for now she pulled out onto the main road with no one the wiser, turning away from the distant flashing emergency lights.
Now that she had committed herself, doubts beat at the back of her brain. Had she left anything at her stargazing sight that could identify her? Heck ... what hadn't she left there? Somewhere in the woods was her telescope, her camp chair, and worst of all, her phone. And she'd left tracks all over the beach. Didn't they have forensics nowadays that could match tire treads to specific cars? And what about DNA?
It's a rural county sheriff's department. They're not exactly CSI.
But even if she didn't get caught ...
She glanced down at Alien Test Pilot, slumped sideways on the seat with his head resting against her leg. She couldn't see much of him in the dark, but she'd seen enough earlier to be quite sure he wasn't human.
His species might kill and eat humans, for all she knew.
Or maybe she'd accidentally started an intergalactic war. Maybe his people were going to think she'd kidnapped him.
And yet, she couldn't leave him out there, any more than she could've left an injured accident victim alongside the road.
***
As she got closer to town, headlights on the road became more frequent. All of the traffic was headed the other way, going out to the lake to get a closer look. Little did any of them realize that the main attraction had just passed them in a nondescript, beat-up farm truck.
Her heart rate accelerated every time headlights flashed by. She felt like the words I HAVE AN ALIEN IN MY TRUCK were painted two feet high on the side of the truck bed. But none of the other vehicles slowed; no brake lights flashed in her rear-view mirror. When she turned into her driveway, no one turned in behind her.
The lights in the house were off. Her dad didn't like to admit it, but he got tired early these days. Tonight it was a relief. At least she could save one awkward explanation for tomorrow.
She drove slowly through the yard and around behind the barn. Here at last, out of sight of either the road or the house, she turned on the dome light for a proper examination of her alien passenger.
The first thing that struck her, oddly, was how very human he looked. If not for the blue skin and blood, and the gold dots on his face—which looked organic rather than metallic, like the iridescent whorls on a peacock's tail—he could actually be human. The silver threads that glimmered all over his skin appeared to be some kind of adornment, if not tattoos then bits of metal imbedded in his skin. With some face paint and a set of decent clothes, he wouldn't raise eyebrows just walking down the street in downtown Sidonie.
Well. Except for those shoulders, and those arms, and all that ... everything. These were probably inappropriate thoughts to have about a guy who was bleeding all over her truck seat, but especially after bodily hauling him into the truck, it was impossible for her to avoid noticing that he was built. His sleeveless silvery-gray coverall was tight enough to give her a good look at his defined chest and flat stomach.
Outer space must have some good gyms.
Remembering how deftly and easily he'd overwhelmed her, she wondered uneasily if this guy could be an alien bounty hunter or space pirate. He could be a soldier from an invading army, or some kind of cyborg killing machine ...
But whatever he was, he bled. And he'd tried not to hurt her once he'd realized what he was doing.
Now that she was getting used to the deep blue tint of his skin, she could see he'd gotten more banged up in the crash than she had realized on the beach. His entire right shoulder was one huge purple-blue bruise, and his arm was scraped, with clotted dark blue blood welling along the gash, and—
... glimmering?
Sparkling?
Baffled, she leaned closer. His injured arm appeared to glitter under the dome light. Very gently and carefully, she picked up his forearm so she could study it up close. With her nose almost touching his skin, she thought she could see something effervescent fizzing along the gash, as if his blood itself was gently bubbling—
The arm in her hands jerked, and before she had time to react, a strong hand closed over her wrist, twisting it. She gave a gasp of mingled surprise and pain, jerking away, and just as quickly, in apparent reaction to the noise she'd made, he released her and sat up.
His eyes, she discovered, were a startling gold, reflective as a cat's. They would have shocked her more if one of them hadn't been almost swollen shut, a very human touch of vulnerability. He was squinting against the truck's dome light. Maybe such catlike eyes could also see in the dark.
The entire side of his head that had been pressed to her truck seat was clotted with blood, and while she couldn't get a better look without getting closer, she didn't think it was her imagination that the bloody area seemed to fizz gently, just like his cut arm.
It's healing, I think?
He'd bled all over her seat, and all over her, but he wasn't bleeding now, except for a bit of sluggish oozing. There was blood on his jumpsuit, quite a lot of it, but it didn't seem to be getting worse. Which was weird; with that much blood, she wouldn't have expected that it could have clotted already. Maybe the fizzing was some kind of ... leak-stopping measure?
He said something, causing her gaze to jerk back up to his face. His voice was soft, the words lilting, but no more familiar than at the lake.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I can't understand."
He frowned. Touched his ear. Said something else, to the air more than to her. Talking on a radio, maybe? But from his worried look, he wasn't getting an answer.
Sarah cleared her throat, getting his attention again. "Sarah," she said, planting her hand on her chest, and then pointed to him.
She wasn't prepared for his reaction. He jerked away until his back slammed into the truck door, brought up his left hand in a fist in front of his chest, and pointed his right hand at her with the fingers together in a straight line with the palm, like the "paper" in "rock, paper, scissors" but rotated sideways.
Sarah jerked away too, more startled by the sudden motion than scared.
The alien lowered his hands slowly, easing out of what was, she thought, almost certainly some kind of martial arts position. Did he think that's what she had been doing, too?
"Sarah," she said again, tapping her chest.
He jerked at the sound of her voice. Sarah gasped aloud when she realized the patterned spots on his face had turned blue, almost matching the indigo tone of his skin. As she watched, their former gold color began to return.
And then ... he smiled. It was just a slight tug of his lips, but it made her smile back, because it was so recognizably human.
"Reian," he said, touching his chest in a near-perfect emulation of how she'd done it.
"Rain?"
Her clumsy attempt to pronounce the lilting syllables with their sleek, gliding vowels made his smile widen, just wide enough that she glimpsed a wholly unexpected dimple in his left cheek before he turned solemn again—though the faintest hint of that smile continued to lurk in his golden eyes. "Reian. Rei."
"Na," he said, with another brief smile. "Sairah."
He made her ordinary name sound exotic.
"Yes, Sairah," she said, and they grinned at each other in a moment of shared triumph. He seemed to be just as delighted to achieve communication, however rudimentary, as she was.
4
___
I T MIGHT BE exhaustion, it might be fatalism, but Rei didn't think the native was going to hurt him.
He could tell by the way she looked—human features, curly blonde hair, freckle-splattered skin—that this world was a Birthworld planet. That made things easier. Most intelligent beings in the galaxy, including his people and the Galateans, were derived from DNA taken from Birthworld, the unknown planet where humankind evolved. This woman was relatively unmodified, from the look of her. That meant he could probably eat her people's food, breathe their air, and live in their dwellings without needing any special accommodations.
It would be easier to think if a blinding migraine wasn't splitting his head open. The pain in the rest of his body was relatively easy to ignore, or at least more familiar. He was used to hurting. The faint tingle of nanites combined with the hollow, hungry ache of his body's own healing ability let him know that it was being taken care of.
But the headache was different. It seemed to have a presence of his own, pressing on the insides of his skull like an expanding balloon.
*Lyr?* he thought experimentally.
There was no answer, no thread of comforting warmth, not even the thready but still reassuring sense of Lyr's presence that he could sense when his friend was asleep or unconscious. Wherever Rei had ended up, he must be well outside Lyr's range. Either that, or—
He pushed the thought down. He couldn't think of Lyr, couldn't think of Rook. Each moment had to be taken one at a time.
Right now he had a friendly native with him who seemed to want to help. If only he could understand her properly. Either his translator had been fried by the same power surge that had fried the cuffs and collar, or this world's language wasn't one of the languages stored in it. Possibly both. He had thought a minute ago that she'd been lining up an energy blast from her cuffs, but no, she didn't actually seem to have cuffs. He couldn't see anything under her sleeves, and when he'd moved into a defensive stance of his own—by habit, having forgotten that his cuffs weren't working—she didn't act afraid. Which meant they were on a planet that the Galateans hadn't "pacified" yet.