by Lauren Esker
"Dad! At least wash the grease off."
Rei came downstairs from the bathroom, toweling off his hands. There was a moment of awkwardness when Sarah started to reach for him and quickly dropped her hand, spinning away to pick up the salad bowl and put it on the table.
"Oh, knock it off, you two." Her dad was washing his hands at the sink; he didn't bother looking around. "I can see what's goin' on. I got eyes."
Sarah noticed that Rei was—blushing? Yes, definitely blushing. His tsinde spots had turned a heated dark blue.
"I promised Rei you wouldn't be weird about it," she said quickly as she scooped up a stack of plates. "I'm a grown-up, Dad, and you said you want me to have my own life—"
"Honey." Her father caught her shoulder with a wet, soapy hand as she plopped the plates onto the table as if they'd done something to offend her. "I didn't say I mind. He makes you happy, does he?"
"Yes," she said, ducking to hide her smile.
"Well then." Gary turned to point a finger at Rei, who looked at it, puzzled. "Punkin, am I right that he does understand what I'm saying, even if I can't understand him?"
"Yes, as long as I'm in the room. I think?" She looked at Rei, who nodded.
"Good. You treat my little girl right, you hear me?"
"I would never hurt your daughter," Rei said sincerely. "Never."
Sarah blushed as she translated.
"Long as we've got that worked out." Gary dried his hands on a dish towel and reached for the salad tongs. "Let's see if that pot roast tastes as good as it smells."
After dinner, Rei quietly helped clear away the table. He seemed surprised by the process of washing dishes. "Don't you have machines for this?"
"Well, in the sense that they exist on this planet. We don't own one, though."
"Hmm." He reached for a plate and scrubbed it under the running water.
"Is this very different from what you're used to?"
Rei hesitated before answering. "It is very like my childhood. Your technology is more advanced than what we used in my village, but otherwise ... it is very like it."
"Is that good or bad?"
"I don't know. A little of both, perhaps." He smiled. "Many things are."
She leaned closer to brush his lips with her own. "I hope this is good," she murmured.
"This is good." He smiled back at her. "This is only good."
Only good. She felt the same way ... if she let herself. If she didn't remind herself that this was temporary, that he was going to have to leave soon.
After dinner, Rei went back out to work on the spaceship some more. Sarah did the evening chores and then watched TV with her dad, but restlessly; she kept glancing out the window, where light spilled out of the barn into the night.
Gary reached for the remote and turned down the volume. "Go on then. Keep him company."
"Am I that obvious?"
"More than you know." He grinned at her. "Don't think I'll mind if I notice the couch wasn't slept on, come morning."
Sarah threatened playfully to hit him with a couch pillow, then kissed his cheek and got up.
She took the sheepskin jacket and went out into the night. It was crisply cold and drizzling again; she shoved her hands deep into her jacket pockets. The barn, at least, was dry if not that much warmer.
"Hey there," she murmured, bending down to scratch Mouser's head as the cat twined around her ankle. She checked Mouser's food and water bowls to make sure both were topped up before going around the back of the dismantled spaceship.
Rei was sitting in the straw beside it, scribbling with a carpenter pencil on the back of a feed receipt. He let it drop into his lap with a sigh, then looked up and saw her. His smile was warm but distracted.
"Not going well?" Sarah asked, sitting beside him. The back of the receipt was covered with rough diagrams and what she guessed were notes, written in an angular, runic-looking script.
"It is not going to be easy to fix with the tools and materials that you have on your world."
"Will it be easier in the morning?"
His face softened; he took her hand. "Perhaps not. But it will keep."
The TV was off when they let themselves quietly into the house, the living room dark but for a single lamp. Sarah led Rei past the couch, and leaned close to whisper, "Dad doesn't mind. Really. We'll just have to be quiet."
It was hard to fit two people into her narrow bed, harder still to keep the bedsprings from squeaking.
They managed.
Outside the window, rain was falling more heavily now. Sarah fell asleep to the sound of water dripping off the eaves, and somewhere above the clouds, the dull chop of helicopter rotors, bound for destinations unknown.
Interlude: Black Helicopters at Midnight
___
H OMELAND SECURITY AGENT Anita Pradhan had long since given up on the idea that her job would be glamorous, but it was occasionally exciting. Not to mention surprising. Being airlifted in the middle of the night to a remote location via helicopter was definitely a surprise. She tried to stick close to her boss, tried not to yawn, and stretched out her hand, which was still cramping from signing an entire stack of NDAs. Whatever the hell was going on, it was something big. A terrorist attack? she wondered. In the middle of rural ... wherever they were?
Somewhere in northern Wisconsin was her best guess. They'd taken off from Chicago in a large helicopter with no markings on it, and flew across towns and roads and a lot of dark woods to get here. She wondered if they could have even crossed the border into Canada. The weather had grown rainier and foggier as they flew north, but she'd been able to glimpse, from the air, a large floodlit clearing as the helicopter descended. Very large—a landing field the size of several football fields, in the middle of the woods. She just had time to get an impression of something parked in the middle of it, in the fog, before they landed at the edge. Anita looked around as she scrambled out, ducking beneath the slowing blades with the downdraft whipping her thick, dark hair around.
There were some low bunker-like structures along the edge of the woods, bristling with antennas. The fog was heavy enough that she still couldn't tell what kind of vehicle was parked in the middle of the clearing. A big cargo plane, maybe? She hadn't seen a runway, but the visibility was poor enough that she could have missed it. Fog haloed the floodlights, and now rain was starting to fall. Anita stifled a yawn and pulled her blazer around her as the cold wind cut through it, and wished she was back in Chicago with Neil.
For this, they'd pulled her away from date night with her husband. Neil had been great about it, he always was, but now she was teetering around in a cow pasture on date-shoe heels, shivering since she hadn't even thought to pick up a decent jacket. This was not the night she'd planned. By now they were supposed to be back in their condo, with candles burning next to the bathtub, enjoying Neil's hands all over her soaped-up, naked body ...
"Pradhan!" her boss, Leary, snapped at her, and Anita wrenched her mind back to reality. Like Anita herself, Leary was former Army, a big brusque guy with a gray brush cut. She'd done a tour in Afghanistan before she decided she could better serve her country elsewhere. As for Leary, she wasn't sure what his story was, but sometimes she got the impression he thought he was still barking orders at new recruits—and there was a part of her that instinctively responded to it.
"Sir?"
"Show me your ear."
"My—ear?"
"Turn your head, Pradhan."
Puzzled, she turned her head, and jerked in surprise as one of Leary's thick hands took her jaw in an impersonal grip, steadying her head and turning it even further. "What—" she began, and then a sharp pain stabbed behind her ear. She cursed, jerked away, and turned to see Leary withdrawing some sort of injector.
"What the fuck!" she snapped, reaching up to feel behind her ear. It still hurt, sharp as an earache.
Leary swatted her hand away.
"Don't touch it for the first few hours. You're gonna have a ki
ller headache. Don't make it worse."
"What'd you do to me, Leary?" she demanded, but her boss turned away as the door to one of the bunkers opened, spilling light into the night. Anita cursed again under her breath and scrambled to keep up. She had to catch herself on the doorframe as she wobbled. There was a buzzing sensation in her ears, and he wasn't kidding about the headache. Also, she was starting to shiver from the damp, chilly night. She hoped it was warmer in the bunker.
It wasn't, much, but at least it was brightly lit. The walls were cinderblock, the room crowded with folding tables. Extension cords for computer equipment snaked across the floor. The place had all the hallmarks of a hastily-established command center.
There were about a dozen people in the room, and a few of ... something else.
Anita stared.
Her first, crazy thought was: Halloween costumes? Six men, two women, all of them among the tallest people she'd ever seen; the largest of them had to duck his head to avoid bashing it on the ceiling. He had to be eight feet tall if he was an inch. All of them wore sleeveless, dark blue uniforms, exposing powerfully muscled shoulders; even the women were built like bodybuilders.
Their bare arms were lightly furred; so were their faces. A few of them had tails, and some had erect catlike ears. The huge guy was covered with tawny fur, and the hair on his head was thick and rusty brown; she could only think of a lion. Of the others, there was one more tawny lion type—one of the women—and the others had fur that was either leopard spotted or tiger striped. Each wore a gold belt with various gadgetry on it, and a pair of gold bracelets, but no weapons that she could see.
Unlike the others, Lion Guy had a sash across his chest, striped red and gold. Anita was willing to bet he was their leader.
Lion looked up and said something in a brusque voice that, even though he was speaking a strange language, instantly made her think of Leary; it had the same drill-sergeant cadence. It also sent a renewed bolt of pain through her skull, along with a weird sensation that was almost like distant whispering. Anita winced and clapped her hand over her ear.
"We just gave her one of your translators," Leary told Lion Guy. "It's not working yet."
Lion Guy said something. Anita tried not to wince, her eyes watering from the baffling mix of sensations. A translator, like, what, like on Star Trek or something?
The conclusion was inescapable. If she'd seen these guys on TV, she could have convinced herself that it was all makeup and CGI. But they were standing right in front of her, their fur rippling and tails twitching as they moved.
These were aliens. Actual, bona-fide aliens.
And she used to think government cover-ups were made up by conspiracy theorists with too much time on their hands ...
Lion Guy said something. "Look, we couldn't have you land any closer to the crash site," Leary snapped. "You think we want to explain your spaceship to a town full of curious farmers? Too bad your runaway didn't have the decency to go down in the middle of Siberia or something."
"Spaceship," Anita repeated in a whisper.
Movement on one of the computer monitors caught her eye. It showed a camera angle of the landing field. Tuned to some part of the spectrum other than the visual, the camera penetrated the fog, giving her a clear view of a ship unlike any she'd ever seen: all rounded curves, like it was made of silver teardrops. It was lifting off, levitating smoothly from the ground and kicking up a shower of earth and gravel from underneath.
"That's a UFO," Anita said in a tiny voice. No one paid any attention to her.
Above the monitor, on the wall, was a large map of Wisconsin. Two parts of the map were circled in red. One was far in the north, near Lake Superior. The other was somewhere around the central part of the state.
"Hold out your arm, Pradhan," Leary ordered, wrenching her away from her contemplation of the map.
Anita jumped. A leopard-spotted man had closed in on her, holding a device in one hand. He smiled and extended his empty hand, palm up, then nodded to her left arm and mimed pushing up his sleeve. The gold bracelets on his wrists glinted against his fur.
"Why?" Anita asked.
"They want a blood sample. Let 'em. They requested you, so give 'em what they want."
Anita swallowed and pushed up her sleeve. "What do you mean, they requested me? Why?"
"They want a broad cross-section of human genetic material. We promised samples from as many people as we could get on short notice. And you're the only agent in the area with a Southeast Asian background."
"What?" Anita said, too shocked to jerk away before the device stung her arm. "What in the hell are they going to do with it?"
"Ask him," Leary said, gesturing to the leopard guy, and turned to speak to an aide.
Leopard Dude smiled again and said something, which intensified the buzzing inside her skull. His hand was gentle, cupped under her wrist, and his green eyes, though they lacked whites and resembled a cat's, somehow seemed to have a kind quality. Anita scowled at him, refusing to be lured into liking him. Cooperating with DNA-collecting aliens sounded like a terrible idea to her.
He spoke again and mimed touching his own ear, then turning his head.
"Are you offering to do something about my headache?" She hesitantly turned her head, but mindful of what had happened the last time, tried to keep watching him out of the corner of her eye.
He touched something cold to the skin behind her ear. She flinched, then reeled as an overwhelming wave of dizziness washed through her. The dizziness and nausea lasted a few interminable seconds before receding, leaving her standing shakily with the leopard guy steadying her.
"Sorry about that," he said. "Can you understand me?"
"Oh! Yes!"
"You might have—" She missed the next few words; they seemed to fall into a black hole of incomprehension, like a car radio losing reception under a bridge. She couldn't even tell how she was understanding him in the first place. She could hear the words he was saying, and knew they were in a language she'd never heard before, but she understood them anyway.
"—installing itself in your mind," he finished. "The basic kit is easy to use but ..." He grimaced. "Not at all comfortable. I've given you an enzyme to enhance the setup process."
"There's a thing in my brain that's translating your words for me," she said, amazed. A book she'd read in college came back to her. "Like a Babel fish."
"I don't know what that is."
"Nothing. Fiction. It's fiction. All of this is supposed to be fiction." She stared around wildly, at the tall cat-people talking to Leary, who looked even tenser than she was used to seeing him. At least he wasn't acting completely blasé about it; this made her feel a little better. "Who are you people? Was that really a spaceship out there?"
"How else would we get to your planet?"
"What are you? Why are you here? Why did you want my blood?"
His warm, ready smile flashed again, showing a glimpse of uncomfortably sharp-looking canines. "You can call us Galateans. I'm Legionnaire Rikos of House Teirn, the field medic for my team. As for the blood I drew from you, that's part of the deal we have with your people for their assistance with our small problem."
"What deal?" she asked, trying not to sound as panicked as she felt. "What small problem?"
"We are always collecting genetic material for our data banks so that our researchers can make use of it. As for the nature of our problem, one of our soldiers went missing on your world."
"How?" she asked.
"He ran away." Rikos's face was grim. "He may be dead, but if not, we're trying to recover him for discipline."
"I think he'll be pretty easy to find," she said, looking him up and down. "We don't have very many people like you around here."
"So I've been told. He doesn't look like me, though. He's Polaran. They're smaller than Galateans and blue-skinned."
"Blue skin, gold fur, or pink scales," Anita told him, "I can assure you, if your guy's gone AWOL here, he won't be able t
o hide on Earth for long."
11
___
“W
HERE ARE YOU going?"
Sarah paused in the doorway, clean clothes bundled in her arms. She hadn't meant to wake Rei, but she also hadn't expected him to sleep through her quietly slipping out of bed, into the bathroom for a shower, and back to the bedroom to collect a sweater and jeans from her closet.
He was normally so cautious, so alert. But it was she who had wakened a dozen times during the night, startled by the presence of another body pressed warm against hers in the narrow bed. Every time, Rei had been deeply asleep, limp and heavy, not even stirring when she propped herself up on an elbow to watch his lax face as he breathed softly and steadily in the gentle green glow of her lightning-bug-shaped nightlight.
As if he hadn't truly slept in days—weeks—months; as if all it took was having her beside him in the bed to relax him.
"I'm going to class," she whispered, closing the door. Her father was still asleep; she didn't want to wake him. She began pulling on her jeans in the dark bedroom.
Rei sat up in bed. The light coming in around the door from the hallway, and the gray light of dawn through the lace curtain over her bedroom window, gave just enough light that she could see him shake his head.
"To class? I don't understand."
"Class? School? College? That's where I went on Monday, er, the other day, you know, when I was gone all day."
He nodded. "I remember that. I couldn't understand most of what you were saying then. It's a kind of training that you're going to?"
"Sort of. I'm studying astrophysics. That's a type of science, about stars and planets and gravitation."
"Science training?" He smiled, a flash of white teeth in the dark. "That's impressive. I didn't know you were a scientist."
"Just a rookie scientist who's still learning. And based on what I've seen so far of you and your spaceship, I now know that almost everything I'm learning is wrong." She pulled her sweater over her head and ran a hand through her damp curls. "But still, I paid for those classes, so I need to not flunk out. I won't be gone for long. Just a few hours. You can sleep for a while longer."