"For now," she agreed because her heart was going too fast to say anything else.

He lingered for a moment, staring down at her, and she felt a strange thrill at the heat of his golden gaze focused on her. His hands, pinning down her wrists, slid slowly down her arms, and for a moment, she thought they would wander elsewhere. But he shifted off her instead, standing and offering her a hand up. She accepted it without comment, wondering what to think about what had just almost happened.

The quality of the wall screens was such that Jewel couldn't tell where the horizon ahead of her became a ship wall. A black, wintery ocean stretched out ahead of her, choppy surface like chipped obsidian, capped with white foam like the light catching on volcanic glass. Twin suns spun in the distant clouded sky, one large and white, the other small and blue. It was stunning to see.

I'm looking at the sky of another planet, Jewel thought. I'm standing on an alien shore. Are you proud of me now, Mom? Your little girl is a goddamn astronaut.

"If I tell you to go back to your habitat, will you run off again?" Kay asked, standing beside her as she looked out at the horizon.

"No," Jewel said with a sigh. "No, I'm done. Although I really don't want to go back there."

"Why do you dislike it so much?" Kay asked. "It is designed to be as much like your home planet as possible."

"It's a cage," Jewel said pointedly. "One I can't leave without your permission. How would you like to be stuck in a box waiting for someone else's permission to do anything?"

His mouth tightened like she'd struck a chord, but he said nothing.

"Besides," she went on. "It may be just like Earth, but that doesn't exactly make it hospitable to a modern human. We need buildings, beds, appliances. We don't just live in empty fields."

Kay frowned thoughtfully.

"I will look into it," he promised. "In the meantime, I think one of the guest quarters could be adjusted to suit you."

He turned and headed for the wall, touching a panel to move it aside. He seemed to have returned to his stiff formality, the wild unguarded glimpse of the real him she'd briefly seen already receding. She followed him out. He touched a wall panel and an alcove opened, revealing a neatly folded set of robes like the ones he usually wore. He pulled them on as he walked, and as he passed through the arch into the main stadium, the black suit melted away, dissolving as though it had never been. Jewel followed him a little more cautiously and shivered as she felt the suit vanish. Her clothes were fortunately still beneath it, albeit wrinkled from being so tightly compressed to her skin for so long. They already weren't in great shape after a couple of days of escape attempts.

Jewel was more prepared when Kay led her onto the air track in the center of the room and didn't fall this time as it caught them up and sped them away, past the rows of habitats and back into the white office-like hallways. When it stopped, Kay kept walking and Jewel followed him.

"Occasionally, academics elect to travel along on one of the Diviner's missions to study the animals and the planets we encounter," Kay said. "In which instance, we house them here."

He stopped in front of a plain door, which he opened to reveal an equally plain white room. It was entirely empty.

"They do not stay often," he added.

Kay stepped into the empty room with a frown, her footsteps echoing.

"I wonder why," she muttered. "I guess there aren't any on board right now?"

"None since I became Curator," Kay replied.

"In fact, I ran all over this ship today," Jewel realized. "I haven't seen anyone but you."

"That is because there is no one else," he answered as though it weren't at all unusual. "I am the only crew member on the Diviner."

"Why?" Jewel asked, slightly horrified. "You're out here for months, completely alone?"

"The Diviner is almost fully autonomous," Kay answered. "It charts its own flight plan, collects and analyzes samples and subjects on its own, and manages the habitats according to collected data and a complex self-teaching AI. Only one crew member is necessary. I handle emergencies and breakdowns and manage communication with my home world, and when there are guests on the ship, I educate them about the resident exhibits. Nothing else is required."

"But you're alone," Jewel repeated. "I mean, I don't know what your species is like. Maybe you're not as social as humans. But still, so much time without a single other member of your species to talk to. Don't you get lonely?"

He paused for a moment as though considering it.

"No," he said at last and walked past her to where one of the computer panels was set into the wall. He stared at it for a moment, and Jewel watched over his shoulder as windows and alien text shifted across it, following the movements of his eyes or possibly his thoughts. Suddenly, the text changed to English letters. The words they spelled didn't make much sense and the capitalization and punctuation seemed mostly random.

"Here," Kay said, stepping away. "You can ask the ship for whatever you need through this panel. I have set it to your language. The ship is still learning your species's language groups, so it may not be perfectly accurate yet, but it should understand you if you ask for something. It will attempt to interpret your telepathic intention as it does when we are speaking to each other and also take context from the files on your planet. It should work reasonably well."

"Reasonably well," Jewel repeated doubtfully. "So I just talk to it?"

He nodded, and Jewel stepped closer to the panel with a frown. She cleared her throat.

"Earl Grey, hot," she ordered in her best Patrick Stewart impression. She grinned at Kay sheepishly. "Couldn't resist."

An alcove opened beside the panel, holding a plain white cup. Jewel picked it up cautiously, sniffed the contents, then took a sip.

"This is just hot water," she said with a frown.

"I have no idea what that was supposed to do," Kay replied. "I doubt the computer did either. Perhaps you should start more simply?”

Jewel made a small grumpy noise of disappointment and accepted that there was no one here to appreciate her joke right now anyway.

"How about a bed?" she tried. "Just something comfortable to sleep on."

She jumped aside, surprised, as the floor rose up in the left-hand corner of the small room and shifted to become a simple twin-size bed. The mattress and the frame seemed fused, a section of the mattress raised in a pillow-like shape.

"Why is it flat?" Kay asked as Jewel went to examine it, pulling back the simple thin blanket.

"It's supposed to be flat," Jewel answered with a frown, touching the mattress, which seemed to be a solid, soft mass rather than anything with springs or foam like she was used to. "Are Ra'hom beds not flat?"

"Of course not," Kay answered. "They are angled. It is more healthy and comfortable to sleep sitting up. How can you sleep lying flat?"

Jewel didn't really have an answer for that. She sat down on the bed experimentally, sinking in more deeply than she expected. Still, it wasn't bad. Definitely better than sleeping on the ground in her habitat.

"Well, this seems pretty comfortable anyway," she said. "So I guess it worked."

"Good," Kay said with a nod. "Well then, since you know how the computer works, I will leave you."

"Wait!" Jewel said, standing up as he turned to leave. "What am I supposed to do? I can't just sit in this room for six months."

"Of course not," Kay said from the door. "I will be back tomorrow to begin your training."

"Training?" Jewel repeated, not liking the sound of that. But the door was already sliding closed behind him and wouldn't open at her touch. He'd locked her in. "No! Come back here, you big blue asshole! This isn't fair!"

But she knew he wasn't coming back. Whatever that moment they'd experienced earlier was, it clearly hadn't affected him that much.

* * *

The day rolled past supremely uneventfully. She struggled with the computer some more, trying to make it understand basic concepts like pizza and end tables with inconsistent success. It still didn't seem to grasp the concept of food beyond plain water and fruits and vegetables. But if she described the shape of a piece of furniture in enough detail, the computer could reproduce it pretty decently. She got another blanket, a table, and some chairs.

The vase had been a triumph, as had been convincing the computer to give her flowers to put in it. They weren't Earth flowers, but they were pretty. Almost like hydrangeas in big, colorful bunches in shades of blue and pink. They didn't seem to be dangerous, so she said to hell with it and put them in the vase in the center of the table. They were the only spot of color in the otherwise plain room. The computer didn't seem to understand how to do any color beyond white or occasionally black.

Once she'd exhausted the entertainment potential of asking the computer for weird things and watching it present increasingly unrecognizable results, she lay on her bed, contemplating how she could go about requesting a book or a video game or just something to do. Maybe whittling? She'd had her wood carving badge in girl scouts. She hadn't done it in ages, but it seemed less complicated than asking the computer for the latest season of her favorite TV show.

"I don't suppose you'd give me a knife?" she asked the computer without sitting up. A red cue light blinked on the panel accompanied by a brief harsh buzz. She'd come to recognize that as an indication that the computer not only couldn't make that, but it wasn't even going to try. It had done the same thing when she'd jokingly asked it for a puppy.

"Yeah, I didn't think so," Jewel sighed. "I need entertainment, damn it!"

The computer pinged gently, and the colorful toy thing it had tried to tempt her with back in the human habitat appeared on the night stand. She rolled her eyes and picked it up. The little glowing sphere in the center of the nest of colorful pipes jingled like a baby toy but didn't do much else. She threw it at the door in frustration.

"Try again," she said, irritated. It chimed and dropped a second toy on her chest. She threw that one too. It collided with the first, jingling gently in the corner near the door. She rolled over to face the wall, boredom quickly slipping into misery. She usually tried to stay busy to avoid this, but now there was nothing to do. It was just her and her thoughts. And she and her thoughts had never really gotten along.

She shifted uneasily and closed her eyes. Maybe she could nap the boredom away. It was better than lying here thinking about how she couldn't even get abducted by aliens right. She was probably going to spend the rest of her life in a habitat like the one on this ship, being the worst possible example of her species. Then again, maybe they'd send her home when they realized how incredibly unspectacular she was and abduct someone a little more worth putting on display.

She wondered if anyone was missing her yet. She hadn't had many friends after the discharge. Just Amos really. When she didn't show up to work, he'd probably assume the roads were washed out and she couldn't get down the mountain. But it had been a few days now. Had he tried to call her? Asked the police to check on her? Had they found her truck abandoned on the road, her shoe stuck in the mud? Or had it all been buried by the mudslide like Kay had said? Did they assume she was dead? Had they told her family? Her parents were both gone, one to heart disease and the other to a stroke, but she had an aunt in Indianapolis and a handful of cousins around somewhere. Not that she'd spoken to any of them in years.

Christ, what a depressing, empty casket funeral it would be. If they really let her go in six months, she'd have a fun time explaining to everyone where she'd been. Then again, maybe she wouldn't tell them. Maybe she wouldn't resume her old life at all. It wasn't like she'd been very attached to it. Maybe she'd ask them to quietly set her down somewhere nice and remote and she'd just start again.

Travel like she'd always wanted to. It sounded better than the alternative, going back to a life of steady loneliness, working and going home and telling herself she'd never have anything more. It was also preferable to the possibility of being a caged zoo animal for the rest of her life. She fell asleep imagining where she would go. But in her dreams, she was running through the foreign landscapes of the alien habitats again, laughing and victorious as she was chased through the leaves, climbing a tree that spiraled up and up into the sky, never ending.