by C. Gockel
At the moment, however, he had other concerns. He was losing power fast, and he didn’t want to use his single recharger so soon. He needed food, or a light or heat source to activate his power converter filaments. “I need to get out of the cold,” he said softly to the woman, trying not to scare her. She appeared to be in her late twenties—and since Luddeccea didn’t look fondly on plastic surgery, probably was. She had large black-lined eyes, a delicate nose, and bow-shaped lips that were popular in several sex ‘bot models. The hair on her head was short, silvery, and more like fur. Her wolf-like ears were back and twisted down. 6T9 remembered how Carl Sagan had described the weere. “A genetic experiment gone wrong. They have a very unstable genome, not helped by their relative proximity to the exclusion zone on Luddeccea. Their ancestors were used to clean up the radioactive soil and debris created when the time gate attacked. They’re used as servants and laborers now. They eat our rats.”
Backing toward the bank, the girl kept her eyes averted. She was wearing a large raincoat, and it was impossible to determine her form. She was noticeably short.
A starfighter flew by a few kilometers away.
“The Guard’s doing an aerial search,” Carl Sagan thought. “She has a house very close by. We should get inside.”
6T9 stood up, and the girl jumped. Holding up his hands, he said softly, “I don’t mean to frighten you.”
She was breathing rapidly and barely bobbed her head in acknowledgment. Over the ether, he said in dismay, “I’m terrifying her.”
“I’ll take care of that,” Carl replied. Hopping over to her, he began weaving between the girl’s legs and purring. Her ears perked toward the werfle. He squeaked plaintively and stared up into her eyes while slowly blinking at her.
“You can follow me,” she said softly. Picking Carl up, she pulled him to her chest.
That was too easy. 6T9’s Q-comm heated. Over the ether, he accused the werfle, “You’re using mind control on her!”
“I’m more mind nudging her,” Carl Sagan said. “She is remarkably susceptible to it.”
“Stop it,” 6T9 said aloud.
“What?” said the girl, stopping in her tracks and turning toward him.
“I’m not controlling her mind,” Carl said over the ether. “She doesn’t want to leave you alone in the cold where she thinks you could die of hypothermia. She wants to help, she’s just afraid to. I’m easing her fear.”
“You can read human thoughts?” 6T9 asked over the ether, the implications of the werfle’s words sinking in. Even the time gates could only read ether conversations .
“Yes,” replied Carl.
6T9 still didn’t move. “You never told me you could do that.”
“You never asked,” Carl replied.
Q-comm sparking, 6T9 glared at the creature. “Can you read my thoughts, too?”
Still purring, Carl replied, “No, we can only hear your ethernet conversations.” In a cheerful voice, he added, “But give us time!”
6T9’s jaw got hard, and his feet stayed firmly planted to the ground.
“Do you want to upload yourself?” Carl Sagan asked. “Because that’s what you’re going to have to do if you don’t come with her now. ”
The girl’s ears twitched, and her brow furrowed. Carl squeaked at her and butted her hand with his head, purring madly. The crease in her brow disappeared.
Rain was running down 6T9 in rivulets, and the red light on the periphery of his vision was saying he needed to power up somehow—and fast. But the display of Carl’s power left him unsettled. The werfle was doing something to her he wouldn’t want done to himself.
“The Luddecceans on Libertas are getting closer to Sundancer,” Carl said over the ether.
The dark of Luddeccea’s cloudy, moonless, and streetlight-less night started to become darker still—a darkness that had become familiar during their months at near-light-speed. The girl gasped, perhaps at a sound in the forest.
“Stop,” 6T9 hissed at the werfle over the ether. “Don’t overwhelm the ether with Sundancer’s thoughts. I’ll trip in the darkness.”
Sundancer still never contacted 6T9 directly. Carl had told him she probably couldn’t. It had taken Carl’s own kind nearly a century to master ethernet communication.
The blackness of Sundancer’s nightmare relented, and Carl said, “Sundancer cannot upload herself.”
6T9 exhaled. His power was dwindling. “Lead on,” he said.
Without a word, the girl led him through the trees.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
The girl stopped short, shoulders tightening. “Volka,” she said.
Carl Sagan squeaked and purred. Volka began walking again. They emerged from the trees at a house that appeared to be made of rubbish. It was a far cry from Bernadette’s asteroid, but 6T9 had spent time at worse places when he took up with the independent traders. Still, gravity seemed to increase as he climbed the stairs. He felt miserable, though oddly not for himself.
He should have felt miserable for himself. Obviously.
9
Strays
Volka awoke from the sound of her alarm clock, with her nose pressed against something warm and furry, and memories of a deep and dreadful oozing darkness in her mind.
“Cheep,” said the warm and furry pillow in front of her nose. Her eyes sprung open and she found herself staring at the belly of an enormous, shaggy, orange werfle. She lifted her head. And there was no Myra on the other side of the bed.
How…The events of the night before came flooding back. She’d let a stranger—a human male stranger—into her home after finding him in a stream. Sitting up, she smacked off the alarm and then began winding the clock back up with frenetic energy. What had she been thinking?
She rubbed her head. If Myra had been here, she would have told Volka she was being crazy. But Myra hadn’t been here, and Volka remembered bringing him in and helping him start a fire in the stove—he’d been cold, he’d said. He’d taken off his coat and his shirt and sat with his back to the heat. His wet back had shimmered with sweat or raindrops, and the memory had a dreamlike quality to it. He hadn’t smelled like root, the illegal narcotic that drew some humans to No Weere. She also couldn’t remember any distinguishing tattoos like the type sported by the Human Brotherhood. Still…what had she been thinking?
The werfle cheeped, blinked its eyes at her, and kneaded the bed with its claws. Volka felt her apprehension lifting. The man hadn’t hurt her. She looked around her room. Her paintings were undisturbed on the walls. Not that she thought anyone would want to steal them, especially not a human someone, but once her house had been burglarized and the invaders had ripped her artwork to shreds looking for hidden goods.
A gentle rap sounded at the door. “Volka?” asked the man in a hushed voice.
She blinked. The human stranger was gently rapping at her door. Humans didn’t knock gently. They banged, and then burst in, even into churches sometimes. She bit her lip. Not all humans were like that.
“I was wondering,” said the man in a soft voice, “if I could make you breakfast?”
Her stomach constricted painfully, and she remembered she hadn’t eaten the night before. She’d felt too sickened after the run-in with security, and then she’d found the man in the stream…or the werfle had. Volka pulled her knees up to her chest. It was so…strange. It struck her that she didn’t think she’d recognize him in a crowd. She didn’t know his name, either.
The man cleared his throat. “I’m very good at it.” There was a pause. “And I don’t have any other way to say thank you. ”
Volka’s arms tightened around her knees. “I…don’t have much.” Myra had been peckish the last few weeks, and there’d been no rats in her traps last night. She scrunched her eyes shut. Not that a human would eat rats. She banged her head against her knees. And why should she care about what a human thought of her pantry or her house?
“I saw things I can work with…unless you need
to save them?” There was a pause in which Volka parsed his words. I don’t know if this has to last you a day or a week.
“I’m not that poor,” she whispered. She was fairly well off, actually. Mr. Darmardi compensated her well.
“If it’s all right, I’ll get started…” His voice trailed off.
The werfle purred louder. She turned her head and was mesmerized by its eyes. They’d been brown the night before, but in the beam of morning sunlight streaming through the shade, they now looked golden.
“All right?” she asked.
“I’ll get to it, then!” he said brightly, and her ears perked at his accent she couldn’t quite place, his retreating footfalls, and the noises of pots and pans.
“I guess I’ll get ready for work,” she said to the werfle, scratching him behind the ears. Leaning into her touch, the werfle appeared to smile. “You are a handsome man,” she said to it, which evoked another pleasing purr. She reluctantly got up and began getting ready.
A few minutes later, she stepped out into the kitchen to the smell of butter and eggs that almost completely overpowered the smell of oil and solvents that wafted from her studio in the house’s third room. She sidled to the studio door and peeked in. Everything appeared to be in order.
Her eyes returned to the kitchen. Coffee and jam were on the table, as well as her travel brochures and a rather embarrassing paperback. The paintings on the wall were all in one piece and didn’t look like they’d been moved to scout for money hidden behind them. He’d opened the shutters to let morning light in and now stood with his back to her. He was tall and fit. He wore work clothes—sturdy boots, nondescript dark brown pants, and a long-sleeved gray tee-shirt that had a strange mottled pattern. She bit her lip. He was cooking on her old wooden stove. Most human men didn’t cook unless it was the chefs at the fancy restaurants in New Prime, where the First Families ate. He must be working class.
The man glanced over his shoulder and smiled, and Volka’s hair threatened to rise. Alaric was the most handsome man she’d ever met, with his gray eyes, angular jaw, and sharp cheekbones, but this human was a close second. His teeth were impossibly white. His skin was too smooth, his stubble almost artful. “Good morning!” he said. His eyes dropped to her feet and narrowed. “Hello, Carl,” he said, and then he turned back to the stove.
“Squeak,” replied the werfle whose name might be Carl. She didn’t bend down to pet it. Her eyes were riveted on the stranger. The muscles in his back were working beneath his shirt. He was perfectly proportioned; not so unusual on a working man, but his face was now burned in her memory, and he looked like someone had commissioned Mr. Darmadi to paint an ideal man rather than a real person. Instinctively, she sniffed the air, and her brows drew together. He smelled like metal, plastic, and some other things she couldn’t identify, but also of man. She sniffed more deeply. More like a man than any man was supposed to smell. Swallowing, she mentally checked the calendar, and then delicately sniffed her own wrist. No, she wasn’t being addled by any hormonal surge. She was probably feeling addled by the fact that she’d somehow let him into her house, and she didn’t know who he was.
She cleared her throat. “What’s your name?”
“Sixty,” he replied, sliding something onto a plate. “Sixty-Ni—”
“Reowr!” said the werfle-Carl.
“Sixty…short for Stephen, and Ni—ano, Niano.”
Her ears flicked. “I thought Steve was short for—”
“Sixty’s more like a nickname, actually,” he said. Walking over to the table, he put the dish down. She stared at it. It appeared to be an enormous stack of her stale bread, but toasted. She sniffed again. But there was the scent of egg in the air…
“You don’t like French toast?” Sixty—or Mr. Niano—asked, and she looked up at him. His shoulders were sagging, and his chin was dipped in a look of transparent disappointment.
She crept over to the table and sat down. “I don’t know.”
She picked up the fork and knife, and he said, “Most of the humans I’ve cooked for like it with jam, syrup, or fruit. It adds to the chemical complexity and creates a better contrast of flavors.”
She stared up at him.
His eyes slid to the side. “And as I am also obviously human, I also enjoy it with something sweet.”
She looked down at the plate, and finally put together what he was going on about. “You’re hungry,” she said. “Please, there is more than enough.”
His eyes fell on the food. “You’re sure?”
“Yes,” she said .
“Well, I am running lo—hungry,” he said, grabbing a plate from her cupboard. “Thank you, I will.”
She split the French toast with him, took an experimental taste without jam, and her eyes got wide. “This is really good,” she whispered. He’d made the plain, rock hard bread savory and chewable. Her nose and taste buds detected not just egg, but also a little butter, and he must have opened one of her containers of UHT milk. Animal protein could make even bread delicious.
“Thank you,” he said, plopping a piece of French toast loaded with jam in his mouth. His eyes were flicking between her paintings. “Did you do these?” He tilted his head. “I’ve seen a similar style at—in books.”
She nodded. “We use the layering techniques of the old masters of Earth’s Renaissance. We start with a drawing, and then do several layers of underpainting to establish a faithful rendering of form and value before applying the color. It keeps images very true to life.” Realizing she was saying too much, she tensed, expecting derision for being “fancy” or “uppity.”
Chewing meditatively, eyes still on her artwork, he said, “I’ve seen reproductions of Renaissance masters before. The colors in your painting, however, are—”
“Wrong?” she supplied, the French toast losing its flavor. Like most weere, she was green colorblind. She wasn’t sure what that really meant though. Mr. Darmadi was always telling her that the greens in her paintings were too saturated, though she was only representing faithfully what she saw, and how could her greens be too saturated if she couldn’t see green?
Not looking at her, he said, “I was going to say more vibrant than in real life. You’ve made a bornut tree much more exciting than the drab things really are. I like it. ”
The food suddenly tasted good again. No human had ever complimented her choice of colors.
His eyes drifted down to the table, and the brochures for Libertas, and the paperback. Her cheeks flushed. The paperback was a cheap sci-fi serial with a picture of a metal man on the cover holding a screaming, struggling, scantily clad human woman. Behind them was a crowd of humans with vacant, slightly glowing eyes. One of the vacant-eyed humans was eating a severed human arm—robots could control your mind and make you do terrible things. In this one, the hero had rescued the heroine by chanting the Three Books Prayer over and over, filling his mind with God’s power, leaving no room for possession.
Mr. Niano’s brows drew together as he looked at the cover, and he gave a wry smile. Volka knew the novel was fanciful—there were no mind-stealing supercomputers on Luddeccea, or anywhere in Luddeccean space. The Luddeccean Guard worked very hard to keep them out. Still, the novels made for fun reading.
“Squeak,” said the werfle.
He rolled his eyes. “I’ll be good, Carl.”
Taking another bite, he touched the brochure for the Leetier, the ship she and Mr. Darmadi were taking to Libertas. The illustration on the cover was beautiful. The artist had depicted the ship approaching Libertas, its time bands gleaming on its chrome hull, stars winking in the background. Below the picture, the brochure declared, Travel to Libertas. Luxury accommodations. Comfortable Accelor-gravity.
“Accelor-gravity?” he asked.
“Provided by acceleration,” Volka explained.
His eyebrows rose, and he opened the brochure. “It goes to Libertas? ”
Biting back a smile of pride and excitement, she replied, “Yes, th
e one and only.”
“The one and only…?” he asked.
She blinked. “Yes, that’s the ship that takes civilians to Libertas. The only one. Once a week…You have to have heard of it…”
He looked up at her. “Of course I have.”
The werfle squeaked again.
He snapped at it. “Easy, Carl, I’m getting there,” and then looked up at her and blushed. “When is the next flight?”
“In just a few days,” she said, again biting back her smile. She must be careful and not rub in his nose that she’d be aboard. Some humans would get angry, possibly violent if she told them she, a weere, would be traveling to Libertas. Her smile faded.
“How much does it take to book a passage for oh, say, one man and a werfle?” he asked.
Her eyes got wide.
He cleared his throat and winced. “Is that an odd question to ask?”
The roots of her hair tingled. “Maybe?”
“Oh.” He looked to the side. She took another bite of French toast. It was really amazing what he’d done with terribly poor ingredients…at least according to her weere taste buds. She pieced together his accent, questions, slightly odd, strange, yet utilitarian clothing, his physique…“You’re from the interior provinces, aren’t you?”
For a moment, he held her gaze and then he asked, “It’s that obvious?”
She patted her lips and looked to the side .
He sighed. “Yes, I um…came to Prime…New Prime…to…”
Her gaze returned to him and she found him searching her features. “Work?”
Her ears went back. It sounded like a lie. Still, she sniffed the air. He didn’t smell stressed, like he would if he were being untruthful, but…“How did you wind up in No Weere?” she asked suspiciously.
Lots of country boys wanted something “a little exotic” when they came to town, or they were just too poor to afford a human prostitute.
“There is a weere here,” he said, turning his head and looking at her sideways.