___
S ARAH WOKE TO honey-colored sunlight bathing her bedroom walls, turning the old yellow wallpaper to molten gold.
It was rare for her to sleep past sunrise this late in the year, when the sun rose after seven. As a farmer's daughter, normally she was up at dawn. But this morning, she lay in bed for a few drowsy, indulgent moments.
It had been long after midnight when they'd pulled into the farmhouse driveway. All of them were too exhausted to think about unloading the trailer. Gary had backed up to the big door at the end of the barn, and Sarah and Rei dragged enough clutter out of the way that he could back the trailer into the barn, unhitch it, and then park the truck in its usual place beside the barn.
They didn't have a guest bedroom, as such, so she'd made up a bed on the couch for Rei. "Sorry we don't have anything better. At least it's not the barn, huh?"
His smile was rueful. "You have been too kind. I don't know how I can ever repay—"
"There's nothing to repay. We haven't done anything except be decent human beings. If I were stranded on an alien planet, I'd hope someone would help me too."
She'd run upstairs before she could give in to the temptation to sit beside him on the couch and try to comb the mud out of his stiffening hair with her fingers. She had so many questions, a million questions. And now that they had retrieved his ship, would there be time to get answers to any of them?
Was he even here now? Maybe he was already gone.
This made her sit bolt upright. "Ow," she groaned aloud as her stuff body protested.
There was mud embedded in the creases of her palms, and her hair had dried into a mess of tangles that resisted the brush she tried to rake through it. Outside the window, leafless branches of the old maple tree outside her window glimmered in the morning sun, still wet from last night's rain. The sky was a vivid blue between patchy clouds that sent a brief chill across the world when they temporarily hid the sun.
Sarah opened her window and leaned out so she could see the barn. Everything looked fine. Perfectly normal. You'd never guess there was a trailer with an alien spaceship hidden inside those old wooden barn walls with their peeling paint.
He couldn't possibly have left already, she reassured herself. Not with the ship in the condition it was in last night. But maybe it would be better for him if he had, because she could hear helicopters, not close, but definitely out there. Flying around. Searching. Their buddy from last night had come back with friends.
They know we took something out of the water. They just don't know where we went.
She pulled on a sweater, determined not to lose her good mood. They'd escaped with the ship, the sun was out, and it was a beautiful day. She supposed Rei would probably want to work on his ship, but maybe later she could talk him into letting her show him around the farm a little. If he was leaving soon, she wanted him to have some nice memories of Earth to go with the terrible ones.
There was no one in the kitchen, but she found bacon and scrambled eggs in a covered skillet on the stove. Sarah made herself a bacon sandwich and stepped out into a fresh, glorious morning. The air had a hint of chill, fading rapidly as the day warmed, and a crisp smell of autumn leaves ... and also manure, but long familiarity meant she hardly noticed it except when the wind blew directly from the pasture.
Ringing hammer blows echoed from the barn. Sarah nudged open the side door. The noise escalated to deafening levels before cutting out abruptly, to the sound of a ringing clatter of something falling. The radio was playing country music quietly in a corner.
The spaceship was off the trailer on the floor of the barn. It looked much bigger indoors than it had on the beach, and even more wildly out of place. Nothing about this thing belonged in a barn on a Wisconsin farm. In better light she could see how filthy it was, festooned with lake weeds and mud. A clutter of junk surrounded it, regular metal farm junk mixed with pieces of the matte gray metal and plastic the ship was made of.
"Dad? Rei?"
She couldn't see Rei anywhere, but her dad popped up over one of the ship's side fins, with a welding mask pushed up on his forehead. "Hey, punkin. Playing hooky?"
"Tuesday. No class."
Her dad nodded toward the shelf beside the utility sink, where the coffeepot lived along with its attendant collection of cracked mugs. "Grab a cup of joe, then, and have a look."
Coffee was a lot less interesting to her right now than the spaceship. When she circled around to her dad's side of the ship, she found it gaping open, exposing the interior. It was impossible to tell how much of that was crash damage and how much had been done afterwards by the one-man/one-alien wrecking crew disassembling the ship.
"Are you taking the whole thing apart?" she asked.
"Just takin' off the damaged parts. Can't go to space with shielding that doesn't work."
"Since when are you an expert on spaceships, Dad?"
"Since an alien started tellin' me how to build 'em."
"I thought you still couldn't talk to him." Sarah leaned inside the ship to get a better look; her voice echoed in the small space. "Or did he find a translator for you?"
"Nah. We get by."
"Where is he, anyway?" Sarah asked, looking over her shoulder.
"Up in the loft, gettin' some stuff for me."
Sarah nodded and turned back to her exploration of the ship. Not that there was much to explore. If the outside of the ship had surprised her with its small size, the inside was downright tiny. There was just enough room for the ship's pilot to sit in a cradle made of gray material, resilient enough to spring slowly and soggily back when Sarah poked at it. Water beaded on the surface where her finger had left a dent.
She couldn't tell how the ship was controlled. There was no steering wheel or joystick-type control, no panels of buttons like in a spaceship on TV. There were some switches and levers, but the main feature of the controls was a pair of holes in the molded console panel in front of the seat. They were placed where someone sitting in the seat could insert their arms, so Sarah cautiously reached into one of them. Her fingers squelched in slime and mud from the ship's immersion in the lake, but she also felt mechanical bits and bobs, and finally a handle. Experimentally, she gripped it, and tried to imagine clutching those handles with the ship sealed up around her.
It would be like being trapped inside a tin can. She wasn't claustrophobic, but it still made her shudder. How did the pilot see where they were flying? She couldn't see any signs of windows, ports, or screens. Just a molded gray cradle and two handholds. Maybe that part there, about face height if you were sitting in the cradle, folded down over your face? She shuddered again; that was even worse.
How could Rei bear it, flying through outer space trapped in this cramped tomb? It had to be an escape pod, not an actual spaceship. Maybe there was, even now, an alien ship up there in Earth's orbit somewhere, looking for him.
"Sarah?" said a voice from outside the pod, in a musical, lilting accent.
Sarah banged her head against the pod's ceiling. "Ow," she muttered, backing out, rubbing her temple. Yeah, this was exactly the view of her that she wanted Rei to have, just her ass and feet as she rummaged around in his spaceship.
Rei was standing behind her with a toolbox. He wore a jacket of her dad's, too tight across the shoulders and a little too short in the arms, revealing the bracelets he was never without. Under the cuffs of a pair of rumpled sweatpants, his feet were bare as usual.
"We can get you some shoes that fit," Sarah said. "Unless you like going barefoot all the time. Or is that, um, traditional for your people?"
"Ah." Rei set down the toolbox in the straw. "Your shoes are uncomfortable for me. On the ship, we mostly wear light slippers, as there is no need for heavy footwear when one is indoors all the time. For the slaves, particularly."
"Slaves?" Sarah repeated. Her dad glanced up at her shocked tone as much as the word.
Rei froze. That was a deer-in-the-headlights look if she'd ever seen one. One of his hands started to come up and then dropped down again.
A few different thoughts spun through her mind:
He was right, the translator seemed to be picking up more of their languages, because she could understand him with near fluency.
Which meant she could ask him questions about who he was and where he came from.
Except now, she thought she knew. At least she knew a lot more than she had a minute ago. Rei was an escaped slave, and he was scared.
"Don't be afraid," she said quickly. "We aren't going to send you back. I promise. We're not going to do anything to you. You know that by now."
Rei's hand still hovered at about waist height, fingers clenching and unclenching. He started to raise his other hand toward his neck, but quickly lowered it. "I thought you might know," he said quietly.
"No. We didn't." Sarah glanced at her dad, who was watching them, able to understand only her half of the conversation. "Rei, do you want to take a walk? I think it's time for us to have a proper discussion about things."
"The pod—" Rei began, gesturing to his ship. Then his face twisted into a rueful grimace. "As if it's ever going to fly again. Yeah, come on. Let's walk."
As the implant picked up more English, it seemed to be translating his speech in more colloquial ways. That couldn't possibly be what he was really saying, could it? Well, the implant had learned English from her; presumably it picked up Sarah's speech patterns as well.
"Yeah," she said, "let's walk. Hey, Dad? We'll be back soon."
"Don't forget the hat," her dad said absently, working on a piece of steel with a cutting torch.
"Hat?" Sarah asked, but Rei was already picking up the floppy-brimmed hat from last night. He settled it over his ears and smiled at her.
"Dad," she said, trying not to start laughing, "he's blue. I really don't think it's going to help."
"Better safe than sorry," her dad said serenely. "Be careful out there, kids."
***
"I've been a war slave since I was nine standard years old."
They were in the back pasture, walking through the wet grass. Sarah's jeans were sodden from the knees down. Through the trees, their barn and other outbuildings could be glimpsed now and then, but otherwise it felt as if they were the only people in the world.
But they weren't, of course. Sarah reminded herself to turn back at the old mill, because just beyond it they'd be able to see into the Haverfords' hayfield, which meant someone might see Rei.
"You were stolen from your people?" she asked, looking over at Rei's profile, his gaze downcast as the high meadow weeds whispered past their legs. The hat looked ridiculous, perched on top of his dark hair, but she could see her dad's point; it would help disguise him from a distance. People would see the hat before they'd see the telltale blue.
"No," he said. "I was taken as taxes."
"I think the translator didn't get that right. I'm not sure what you mean." Tribute, perhaps?
"The people who rule my world, the Galateans, leave us mostly alone, but we don't have much that they want. Mine is a primitive world. So they take their taxes in the form of young people to be cannon fodder for their wars."
She wasn't sure what he'd said in his own language that her implant translated as "cannon fodder," but she didn't need to know more. Didn't want to know more. "Those assholes," she snarled, clenching her fists. "They took you as a child? How dare they! You were nine!"
"My years are not the same as your years," Rei reminded her. "Unless you have the standard calendar here."
"I doubt we do, but—okay, so, is nine years old still a child? Pre-pubescent? You were a kid?"
"Yes, I was." Rei turned his measured amber gaze on her. "You seem very shocked by this. Your people don't keep slaves?"
"No!" she exclaimed, horrified. But then honesty compelled her to add, "We used to. We don't anymore. I guess we still do, in some parts of the world. People are trying to end it."
"Different planets have different ways. I don't know how it was for your people, but unlike some parts of the galaxy, Galatea doesn't have hereditary slavery—that is, a slave's children are free. It's also not lifelong. They consider it very humane. For war slaves like us, we owe twenty years of service from the time we become old enough to fight, at fifteen standard years."
"You've been fighting since you were fifteen?"
He shrugged.
"And how old are you now?"
"Twenty-four," he said quietly.
She wondered how that compared to her twenty-six Earth years. He looked about the same age she was.
She tried to imagine knowing she would have to spend the next ten or eleven years of her life as a slave, fighting in a war she'd never signed up for, trapped in that tiny, awful tomb of a spaceship. No wonder it looked so uncomfortable. Nobody worried about a slave's comfort.
"Humane is not the word that comes to mind. How could your people let this happen? What kind of people would do that?"
Rei shrugged again. The pain that ghosted across his face was old and deep. "They didn't have a choice. If it wasn't me, it would have been someone else's child. Some see it as an opportunity, a chance for their children to get a galactic education and come back with useful skills after their twenty years of service is up."
"You. Were. Nine."
Rei smiled very slightly. "I like that you're angry for me."
"Of course I'm angry," Sarah said. "Any sane person would be."
"I'm used to being around people who consider this situation normal."
"It's not," she said heatedly. "I don't care if some people think it's normal in Galatean or in yours. That doesn't make it right. There is no planet where it's morally okay to take a nine-year-old child, put a collar on them, and send them off to fight in someone else's war."
"Yes. Well." He looked down at his hands. "The universe is an unfair place."
It had never really hit Sarah, until now, what a safe and comfortable life she had lived. She knew bad things, terrible things, happened elsewhere, but they had never touched her life. Ordinary deaths, yes. Tragedies, yes. But nothing like this. Sidonie was so small it hadn't even had a murder in her lifetime.
"Do you have friends out there?" she ventured. "Others like you?"
"They're all dead," he said, and it was the calmness of his voice, more than anything else, that brought bile to the back of her throat. "All but one. I don't know if he's still .... But I have go back and try to find him."
"Yes," she said, when she could speak. "Yes, you have to try."
They had been walking alongside the old millstream, and now reached the footbridge that her dad had built years ago to replace the old, rotting bridge that had once been able to accommodate wagon traffic. He'd dragged the old bridge out of the stream with the tractor, leaving it to rot beside the path. It was little more than a snarl of wild roses and blackberry brambles now, with mossy timbers poking out like the spars of a sunken ship. Someone who didn't know it used to be a bridge couldn't have guessed; it looked like a tangle of brush at the edge of the cleared pasture.
Her mother's ashes were scattered here, along this very stream. She took a breath and tried to turn her mind away from that.
"Is there any chance that they might be able to find you here?" she asked Rei.
Rei hesitated. His fingertips glided over one of his bracelets, back and forth, in what looked like an unconscious habit. "I don't know. My collar and cuffs burned out at the moment I fled. That was why I escaped when I did. Normally they would have been able to find and punish me from afar. And the collar would kill me if I got too far from the mothership."
"Kill you?" Sarah repeated weakly, while a cold voice in the back of her mind said, What did you think being a slave meant?
"Yeah, but it didn't happen, so I know the collar is nonfunctional. I don't think they have a way of tracking the pod, not from a distance, anyway. They'd have to jump to the same system I fled to. And I set the coordinates randomly. I don't think they could do it by accident."
"So ... they can't find you?" Sarah ventured.
"I don't think so. But we are within Galatean space, so it's possible they have a detachment in your system—"
"Wait, wait, what?" She stopped in the middle of the footbridge, turning to face him. "What do you mean, we're in Galatean space?"
"The pod's jump drive didn't have enough power to jump far enough to get me out of the Empire," Rei said. "Wherever your planet is, it's within Imperial space."
"No. No way. We're not part of some galactic slave-trading empire!"
"They might not know you're here. Space is vast, and habitable worlds are many. They may not have found you, or they might still be planning the conquest of your world when resources are available. They might just be watching and learning about your people right now. They do that."
"Wow, when you start talking, you really don't mess around, do you?"
"I don't understand?" he asked hesitantly.
"Nothing, just—this is all a lot to dump on a girl, you know?"
There was a large rock on the far side of the footbridge, a glacial erratic that she'd used as a makeshift bench to sit and watch the water ever since she was a little girl. Just downstream, the water swirled into the old millrace, past the dark bulk of the tumbledown mill. Sarah sank down on the rock and patted it in wordless invitation. After a moment, Rei sat beside her. He cocked one leg over his other thigh to rub his foot. In the sunlight, the silver traceries in his skin glinted and the gold spots on his face, trailing down from his eyes to his chin, held a hint of metallic green.
"I see why your people wear shoes," Rei remarked, chafing at the sole of his foot with his thumb. "Walking on a planet is not like walking on a ship."
"Dip your feet in the water," Sarah suggested. "It feels nice when your feet are sore. More so on a hot day, it's actually pretty chilly for it at this time of year, but you said your people come from a cold planet."
"Your planet is very comfortable for me." Rei stepped down to the water's edge and waded in, holding up the cuffs of the sweatpants. "You're right, this does feel pleasant."
"If you think that feels pleasant, then your world must be cold."
He made an amazing picture like that, his indigo skin contrasted against the green pasture and blazing fall colors behind him. Even the hat no longer looked so odd to her.
It was a picture she could never take, of course. She wasn't about to record any photographic evidence of their otherworldly visitor.
Their amazing, beautiful alien visitor.
"Rei," she said, leaning back on her hands on the sun-warmed rock. "Did you really turn into a big dog last night?"
Rei had been starting to lean down to dip his hand into the stream; he froze before he continued rinsing his fingers in the water.
"I assume from your reaction," he said slowly, "that you don't have jaegan on your world."
"Apparently not. I don't even know that word. We do have, um, legends of people who can turn into wolves, but they're just stories, you know? Fiction." At least she'd always thought so. "Just to be clear, that was you? You really did change?"
"I did." He smiled briefly. "Would you like to see again?"
"I'd love—" Sarah stopped, alarmed. She'd been hearing helicopters off and on all morning, but this was much louder. It sounded like it was coming their way.
"Is something wrong?" Rei asked.
"I don't know. I hope not."
She scrambled off the boulder. Now she could see it, a dark shape against the blue sky. It was low, barely above the treetops and rapidly getting larger, the thunder of its rotors thumping in her chest.
"Quick, Rei, the mill!"
She hurried to open the door. They didn't usually keep it locked. Even with her dad's hydro project, there was little inside that thieves might be interested in.
Rei crowded in on her heels, and Sarah shut the door almost all the way, leaving it open a crack so she could peek out.
The helicopter sped toward them, its shadow flitting across the fields underneath. It passed just to the south, arrowing onward toward the neighboring farm. Sarah waited a moment and then cautiously opened the door. "No, stay inside," she told Rei, and went around the edge of the mill, watching the helicopter cruise across the fields without slowing or stopping.
"Your people are seeking me," Rei murmured behind her.
"They sure are. I wonder if they know about you, or just about your crash landing the other night." She stared after the helicopter. "Does your ship put off any signals that people of my world might be able to detect? Like some kind of radiation or a distress signal or anything?"
"Not that I am aware of. But I'm no expert."
The helicopter dwindled against the sky until it could no longer be seen. After straining her eyes to recapture the tiny shape in the blue bowl of the sky, Sarah reluctantly turned away.
"I guess it's probably not a good idea for you to be outside too much, even on the farm. You need to stay close to somewhere to hide." She gave him a critical look. "Maybe Dad wasn't wrong about the hat."
Rei spread his hands, glancing down at himself. "But as you said, I'm still blue. There is no one this color on your world?"
"Nope. Not in the slightest." She gave him a light shove, herding him back into the mill. "We should stay in here for a few minutes in case it comes back."
He let himself be maneuvered into the mill, but kept looking over his shoulder. "Is there any chance your people might have contacted the Empire about me?"
"My people? No, of course not. People on Earth don't even know that life on other worlds exists."
"Are you sure?"
"Very sure," she said firmly, even as a tiny worm of doubt squirmed in her stomach. "If we'd found life on other planets, it would have been all over the news. They couldn't possibly hush it up. Now let's just wait 'til they're gone and go back to try to get your ship working."
Rei took off the borrowed hat and looked curiously around the mill's shadowed interior. Sunlight slanted across the high ceiling through windows near the roof, and the sound of rushing water was almost as loud as outside.
"What is this building used for?" he asked.
"It was built to grind grain, a long time ago. Now my dad's trying to make a power plant out of it. For generating electricity, you know?"
The smell of fresh-cut lumber was strong; her dad had been out here off and on all summer, shoring up old timbers, fixing rotten floorboards, and otherwise doing work that his doctors undoubtedly would not have approved of. His original plan with the old mill had been to restore the former grinding equipment and use it as a gristmill again, to demonstrate to tourists how flour used to be made in the old days. Part of the mill's interior was taken up with the scaffolding from repairs for that project, but at some point he'd switched over to his new idea of turning the mill into a power plant, supplying power for the farm and maybe even enough to sell back to the local power company. So now there were coils of wire and Rubbermaid totes full of electrical components scattered around, along with shop lights and a sleeping bag on the floor. Sarah worried for a minute that he'd started sleeping out here—surely she would have noticed!—but she decided it was just for insulation from the floor, so he could sit and work on his project.
And it was cold in here. In midsummer she loved coming into the mill to cool off, but at this time of year the icebox chill was much less welcome. She shoved her hands into the sleeves of her jacket, warming them against her opposite wrists, and sat on the sleeping bag. "Aren't you cold?" she asked Rei. "Your feet must be cold, at least."
Rei shook his head. "I'm fine. This doesn't feel unpleasant to me. As I told you, my world—"
"—is a cold world. I know." Sarah crossed her arms over her knees. "How cold are we talking, exactly? Like Hoth?" He looked blank. "I mean, ice and snow all the time."
"No, our winters were long and cold, but the summers were not so different from your world."
"This is actually fall. Our summers are a lot hotter."
"Oh." He smiled shyly and bent to pick up a voltmeter, examining its leads absently. "I don't know what else I can tell you. I left when I was nine."
"I know, but you must remember some things, right? I can't even imagine walking on an alien world. This is the only planet I've ever known—the only planet any human has ever known. What was your world like?"
"A lot like yours, really. There were trees and mountains. The colors of the trees were a little different. More green and blue, less red and yellow."
"Our trees aren't that color all the time. Just in the fall."
Rei tipped his head to the side. A distant look of wonder crossed his face. "That's right. Trees change the color of their leaves before winter. I had completely forgotten about that."
Sarah's heart clenched. He was, if anything, even more beautiful in the dim light inside the mill, lit up by a shaft of sunlight speckled with dust motes, a blue-skinned angel from an alien world.
Rei took a sudden deep breath and shook himself out of whatever world of memories he'd gone to. "Anyway," he said briskly, "I don't remember much after all these years."
"Can all your people turn into ..."
"Yes, most of us are jaegan—shapeshifters." His smile was quick and shy, infinitely human, endlessly beautiful. "Do you still want to see my jaegan shape? I'll have to take my clothes off."
Her mouth dry, Sarah said quietly, "I don't mind."
Without a word, he began to strip out of the borrowed shirt, the borrowed sweatpants. His body emerged, muscular and blue, glistening with the silver threads embedded in his skin.
"What are those?" Sarah asked.
Rei paused in the act of folding the shirt. "What are what?"
"Those metal things, on your arms and shoulders." And everywhere else. Glistening silver threads ran between his ribs, formed intricate patterns on his chest, curved around his knees.
"Oh. Those are surgical implants. They're where the nanites in my body live. And they do other things too." He tapped the silver bracelet around his left wrist. "They help me talk to the cuffs. They also power the cuffs, gathering up energy from my entire body. They make me stronger and faster than I would be without them."
"For fighting?"
"Yes," he said softly. "For fighting." He dropped his arm to his side, the silver cuff gleaming against the indigo skin of his hip. "Do you want to see my wolf now?"
Sarah nodded.
Rei leaned forward—and flowed.
There was no other word for it. He was like a blue and silver waterfall, his natural grace turned supernatural as his entire body ran forward like water and pooled into a new shape. Sarah had imagined there would be an element of the grotesque to it, but there wasn't, just a grace and elegance that took her breath away.
Rei ended his shift on all fours and turned his head to look at her.
He was a huge wolf, long-bodied and lean, like something out of the prehistoric past, run through a photographic filter to add colors never designed by nature on Earth. Had he been uniformly blue, he might have looked painted, but he wasn't; his fur was brindled and variegated, deep blue mixed with gray and black, with a darker saddle over his shoulders and back.
In the dark-masked wolf's face, his amber eyes gleamed as if lit from within. But they were still Rei's eyes, looking at her with intelligence and warmth.
"You're beautiful," she whispered.
The blue wolf paced toward her with a slow, rippling predator's grace, dark body moving in and out of the shafts of sunlight and patches of shadow. When he reached her, Rei sat on his haunches like an enormous dog, and then carefully, slowly, lay down at her feet.
Sarah reached out cautiously and brushed his fur with her fingertips. It was coarse at the tips, but when she sank her fingers into his thick ruff, the underfur was luxuriously soft. Adapted for cold weather, she thought.
Rei blinked his luminous eyes slowly, and then closed them as she dug her fingers into his pelt, scratching him like a huge dog. He laid his head on his paws, nestled between the silver bracelets gleaming through the fur on each wrist. Up close she could see that the iridescent gold-green patches on his face were replicated in his fur, a sweeping pattern of small patches like the eyes in a peacock's tail that curved away from under each eye to vanish into the thick ruff around his neck.
"How did a creature like you evolve?" she asked softly, unable to contain her curiosity.
Rei's body rippled and flowed—and he was Rei again, sitting up, naked and blue, while she jerked her hands back guiltily.
The spots on his face darkened to the color of his skin in a rippling blush. "My clothes are over there; I know your people—"
"It's okay," Sarah said. "I don't mind if you don't mind." She flipped back a corner of the unzipped sleeping bag. "Sit with me and use this to keep warm."
Rei hesitated, then settled crosslegged next to her, his knee touching her thigh, and flipped the corner of the sleeping bag over his lap. "The answer to your question is that we didn't evolve. We were made."
"By the Galateans?"
He shook his head. "No, by the Founders, a long time ago." When she looked at him blankly, he asked, "Don't your people have stories of the Founders? Or have you forgotten it, the way you forgot about other worlds? Some of my genetic material is a wolf's, but most of it is human, put together by the Founders long ago. They made you too, you know."
"Made," she repeated. "No, that's not possible. Maybe your people didn't evolve on your world, but we did. We have lots of evidence for it. Fossils. Do your people know what fossils are?"
"Of course we do," he said, smiling. "But that's the point. My people didn't evolve on Polara. Neither did the human inhabitants of any other world in the galaxy where humans live. Sometimes we were modified to fit the ecosystem of the world where the Founders put us, and sometimes they built a whole ecosystem around us, like on my world. But either way, we were put there a few tens of thousands of years ago."
"Ten thousand years?" She shook her head slowly. "No, Rei, we weren't put here by aliens, not that recently. I mean, maybe a few million years ago—but no, that doesn't fit either. This is our world. We've always been here."
"My people thought so too, until the Galateans attacked us. Now we know better, and we've met human cousins of ours from worlds across the galaxy. Before that, we thought we were alone. Like your people do."
"No, Rei, that doesn't work. Archaeology isn't my field, but I know we have an unbroken fossil record going back hundreds of millions of years into the past. And humans are too closely related to other species on the planet not to have come from here. We all have the same basic DNA and everything. We definitely evolved here. There's solid evidence for it."
"Then perhaps my suspicions are true." His eyes gleamed. "When I first woke up on your world and saw your people and your animals, I thought this might be Birthworld itself—the planet where humans originally came from. I've never seen so many Birthworld species all in one place. And your people look as close to base human stock as anyone I've seen anywhere."
"But—no—are you saying Earth was visited by aliens? And they took humans to other planets? That's impossible!"
"Is it?" he murmured. "Impossible as a Galatean battlepod landing in your lake?"
"We—I—but that means you're not an alien at all. Not really. If that's true, you're as human as I am." She reached out to touch the back of his hand lightly, shyly. "Okay, maybe with a few extras. Even after seeing you change shape, I can't believe you can do that. How does it work? Do you change genetically or just on the outside?"
"I have no idea," he said with a quick smile and a self-deprecating shrug. "I don't know much about the science of it. All I know for sure is that we don't change size, only shape."
"Oh, of course," she said, excited. "You can change your shape, but not your mass. That's just basic physics. The mass would have to go somewhere, or be released as energy, and then you couldn't get it back. So as a wolf, you must weigh the same as you do now, right?"
He nodded. "As far as I know."
"Are all your people wolves?"
"Most of my village was. Some people elsewhere on Polara can shift into other kinds of animals, such as—" and here he said several words the implant couldn't translate. Sarah wondered if those were animals that didn't exist on Earth, or if the translator simply hadn't learned the English words for tiger or meerkat or star-nosed mole yet.
"What does it feel like," she asked, "to change shape like that?"
"I don't know how to explain it. How would you explain breathing to someone who doesn't need air?" He spread his arms, and smiled suddenly, wide and dazzling with dimples in both cheeks. "It feels like freedom."
Sarah had to catch her breath. He was gorgeous like that, so bright and alive. She felt as if she'd just caught a glimpse of the person he might have been, if he hadn't spent most of his life as a prisoner in an alien war.
The look vanished as quickly as it had come, locked down beneath his usual surface calm, but his eyes still sparkled with exhilaration. He was happy, she thought, dazed. She wasn't sure if she'd seen him happy before.
"I still feel the same under the surface," he went on. "I can hear and smell better. Some jaegan can shift to forms that have gills or wings, so they can breathe underwater or fly. But I still get tired about as quickly, and I still have to breathe. Not like dragons. They aren't like us at all."
"Dragons?" she echoed in amazement.
"Yes, they're an intelligent species who can also change their shape, but they aren't from Birthworld stock, and they don't follow the same rules we do. They can change their mass as well as their shape, and they can survive in hard vacuum without having to breathe."
How many mythological creatures were actually real? she wondered. Maybe some human in the distant past had met actual dragons. Or maybe the translator had simply picked up on the closest word and he wasn't actually talking about dragons at all. "What are they like? Are they big lizards that breathe fire? Have you ever met one?"
"I'd rather not talk about dragons right now," he said quietly.
There was no emotion in his voice, but the pain that flashed in his eyes cut her to the quick. She wanted more of that bright joy from earlier, not this. Never this.
"No," she said, and moved a little closer to him on the sleeping bag. "No, we don't have to."
They sat in silence for a little while. The helicopter hadn't come back. It really was peaceful in here, with the rushing of the stream outside, the dust motes drifting in the sunlight shafting down from the mill's high windows.
Rei was close enough she could feel the warmth of his skin. If she moved over just a little, his bare leg would be pressing against hers.
So she did. Just that little bit, closing the gap between them, his skin electric against hers.
She was half afraid he'd pull away, but he didn't.
Sitting like this, their usual height difference—six or seven inches—all but disappeared. His eyes, she found, were even more fascinating up close, a hundred shades of gold and green and brown. The iridescent patches on his face fascinated her. At the moment they were a warm gold, close in tone to his eyes, glimmering with iridescent hues of blue and green when he tilted his head.
"Can I touch these?" she asked softly, lifting a hand to gesture to his spots.
"What, my tsinde? Go ahead. Just be careful; they're sensitive."
She touched the skin of his cheek very lightly, beside the spots rather than on top of them. His skin felt soft and human despite its indigo color. Up close, she could see the pores and the subtle darkening over his cheekbones, much too complex for the stage makeup it otherwise resembled. She realized suddenly that she had never seen him shave, and there was no stubble on his face. Instead his skin was very lightly fuzzy.
"Do your people grow beards?"
He gave his head a small shake, not enough to dislodge her hand. "Not in my part of Polara, anyway."
"That seems odd," she said, smiling. "Since you turn furry when you change, to have no hair on your face."
"I have some hair." He took her other hand and placed it lightly on his chest. "Here."
The coarser, curly hair on his chest felt very human. But of course, from what he said, he was human. A long-lost distant cousin of the humans on Earth.
With one hand on his chest, the other on his face, she leaned closer. The tsinde spots were almost reflective, but not quite. "How sensitive are they?" she asked softly.
"Very." His voice was a breathy whisper.
She brushed the juncture where the tsinde met regular skin and felt him give a little shiver. Darker color flushed the spots, occluding their gold with blue.
"But what are they?" she murmured, running her fingertip around the edge. There was no seam, as if they'd just grown there.
"Regular skin cells, I guess. Just flatter and shinier." His fingertips brushed her lower lip. "Why are your lips pinker than your face?"
"I don't know," she whispered. With every word, her lips moved against his fingertips. "They just are."
The tsinde spots were almost the color of his skin now, with faint green and purple overtones. "What does it mean?" she asked, daring to brush one of her fingertips directly across the one just below his eye, and felt him shiver again. "When they change colors?"
"The same thing it means when your skin changes colors."
"But that could mean a lot of things."
"So does this," he whispered.
She leaned closer—he moved his hand away from her mouth, threaded the fingers lightly through her hair instead—and touched her lips to the tsinde just above his jaw, near the corner of his mouth. It was slightly warmer than his skin. Her fingers couldn't feel the difference, but her sensitive lips could.
His breathing quickened as she explored the tsinde with her mouth, feeling the difference between the slick, firm color-changing skin and the softer skin around it. One by one, she traced the line of spots to the corner of his mouth—and kept going. His lips were incredibly soft on hers, and incredibly, perfectly human.
I guess kissing isn't just an Earth thing.
It was gentle and slow and a little awkward; they bumped teeth, making her laugh softly into his mouth. His hand was still in her hair, fingers laced through it; hers was cupped along the side of his face. She trailed her fingers through his hair and made an unexpected discovery.
"What?" he asked, when she pulled back in surprise.
"Your hair is ..." She trailed off, stroking her fingers up from beneath, through soft fluffy hair close to his scalp and into the layer of coarse guard hairs on the outside. No wonder his hair looked so thick. It was like the fluffy, two-layered coat of a Husky dog ... or a wolf. "It's layered. Like a cold-weather breed of dog. The same as you do when you're a wolf. You've got underfur."
"I told you, Polara is a cold planet."
"Yes, but—" She stopped before telling him that humans didn't have that kind of hair. Earth humans didn't, anyway. But Polarans did, and what did it matter if they'd been given the gene for it, or if they had evolved it naturally?
"It's nice," she said instead, running her fingers through it. "Different from what I'm used to."
His fingers stroked lightly across her scalp, making her lean into the petting like a cat. "Your hair is very soft," he murmured.
"So is yours, on the underneath. Like you."
She kissed him again, combing her fingers through his hair. It wasn't like anyone's hair she'd ever touched before; it was wonderfully, uniquely Rei. She loved the contrast between the soft undercoat and the coarser hair on top.
A sense of unreality settled over her like a blanket. I'm making out with an alien in the old gristmill! How is this my life?
And then his lips closed over hers, and his tongue probed her mouth, and she didn't care. Not in the slightest.
They kissed and kissed. Rei kept stopping to look at her, stroking her face, touching her hair, gazing at her with soft amazement in his eyes as if she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.
No one had ever looked at her like that before.
And he—he was beautiful, he was amazing, he was everything: the grace of his long blue body as he leaned into her, the strength in his hands as they cupped her face gently, so gently.
He broke their kiss again to fumble with the buttons on her shirt, breaking into a shy half-grin when his fingers kept slipping off. Sarah folded her hands over his and showed him how to undo them. He'd never actually buttoned the shirt he'd borrowed from her dad, she realized. He might not know how they worked.
She stripped the shirt off her shoulders and saw that wonder in his eyes again as he gazed at her torso, at her breasts spilling over the cups of her bra and the little rolls above the waistband of her jeans. Her nipples were erect, pushing against the cotton fabric of the bra.
"How does this garment work?" he asked, running his hands around the sides.
"It's cleverly designed to baffle even ordinary Earth humans." She started to reach around to undo it herself, then thought better of it and turned around, leaning forward to display her bare back. "There are little hooks under the band. Lift it up a little and push them in to unhook them, then pull them apart."
With her back turned and her head bowed, curls hanging in her face, she couldn't see exactly what he was doing. The sight-unseen feeling of his callused fingertips on the skin under her bra band was unexpectedly thrilling. There were some little tugs against her breasts and then the cups loosened. Heck, she'd had Earth boyfriends who had more trouble with it.
"You're a natural," she told him.
"Your planet," Rei murmured, pressing kisses to her back and shoulders as he carefully slipped each strap over her arm, "is in desperate need," more kisses, "of some proper clothing-fastening technology."
"How does yours work? That thing you were wearing when we—oh—" He'd reached around from behind her, cupping her breasts in his hands. Her aching nipples pressed against his fingers. "It was ... sticky? Down the side ...?"
"The fabric adheres to itself." He spoke into her hair, nibbling at the back of her neck between words. Heady tingling flowed through her with every touch of his lips, with the brush of his breath across the fine hairs on the nape of her neck.
"Where did it go? I'd like to—ah—" He'd figured out that she liked her nipples played with. Concentrating on the conversation required a concerted effort of will. "—see it."
"It's in the ... hailoft." That was English; he must have learned a few more words from her dad. His breath huffed in a soft laugh, tickling her nape. "Right now? Are you sure?"
"No, I—nngh—" She pushed back against him, her whole body tingling now. His hardness pressed against her buttock; she wasn't the only one. Rationality managed to reassert itself a moment later, despite the neck-nibbling and his attentions to her sensitive nipples sparking a growing heat between her legs. "Rei, I—oh—I don't have a condom. Do you know that word? Condom? Protection?"
The neck-nibbling paused. "Are you talking about protection from pregnancy?"
She twisted her head around so she could see his face. "Pregnancy, yes, and STDs—I don't think you could actually get me pregnant, could you? I mean, Earth humans and your kind of people—"
"I should be able to, in theory." He sat back, settling her more comfortably in his lap, and kept lightly stroking her nipples as he spoke. "Most types of humans are cross-fertile with each other. I couldn't right at this moment, of course. All slave soldiers wear contraceptive implants."
"Removable?" she asked, leaning her head back against him. Not that she wanted his—she just wanted to—It was scientific curiosity, damn it.
"With permission. Though ..." He mouthed lightly at her neck. "I don't need anyone's permission now that I'm free. Except yours, of course."
"What about diseases? Do you have space STDs?"
His gentle biting and kissing moved down to her shoulder; he spoke between kisses. "I don't know that last word, but you don't need to worry. I've never had sex before, except for the—" and he said a word that didn't translate.
Sarah's eyes opened. "Except for the what?" She squirmed around in the circle of his arms until she was straddling his lap and facing him; she couldn't have this conversation if he was talking to her neck. "Rei, are you telling me you're a virgin?"
Rei kissed her forehead. "I don't know that word, but if it means inexperienced, yes, I am. I've been taught but I haven't had an opportunity to put it into practice with a partner yet. Is something wrong?"
"Taught? Taught how? By whom?" The sexual energy between them hadn't ebbed—she still had her arms around his neck, her face mere inches from his—but if he was an actual virgin (good God, with a body like that, how?), she didn't want to make him feel like she was springing Sex-Crazed Earth Humanity on him all of a sudden.
He was frowning now, looking worried. "Is that a problem for your people?"
"No, no, of course not." She kissed him to make sure he knew she wasn't upset, nibbling at his lips. "How did you learn?"
"With robots." It translated this time; she wasn't sure if he had used a different word or if the translator had managed to pick up an equivalent meaning from her mind this time. "That's how it's done on Galatea. You learn with robots before you have sex with a person. Not just for slaves; for everyone. You have to practice before you do it for real. I guess it's not like that here?"
Sarah couldn't help the nervous laugh that escaped her. "No, it's definitely not like that. Although maybe the sex would be better if we did." She'd lost her virginity in a fumbling encounter in the back of a pickup truck the year she graduated from high school. Not her most shining moment, especially since they'd broken up two weeks later when she found out he was also having sex with two other girls in her graduating class.
"Do you mind?" His golden gaze searched her face anxiously.
"No! No, of course not." She kissed him again fiercely, letting her body say what her words couldn't. "Do you mind," she asked in sudden worry, her cheek pressed to his, "that I've had other partners before?"
"Different cultures do things differently." He kissed the side of her face, lips trailing across her skin, leaving a shiver in their wake. "My people, we don't ... we tend to cleave to one partner. Sex without attachment is not easy for us. Not like some of the other races of humankind—my friend Skara's people, for example, who have sex as casually as breathing." There was another twist of pain in his voice that she didn't ask about. "For us though, for Polarans, we don't have sex without love. Perhaps it's something in the way we were made. Wolves mate for life, they say. I only know that I never really had much interest in it until ..." He hesitated.
"Until now?" she whispered. Love. The word bounced around in her mind, unable to settle.
"There was one other," he whispered. "Before you. A girl in another sept. But we never—she wasn't—she was transferred elsewhere. I didn't have a chance to get to know her. Learning about sex with the training robots was pleasant, the physical sensations at least, but it wasn't ... I didn't want ..." He trailed off, frustration written in every line of his body, the spots on his face cooling to subtle shades of pale blue and gold.
"Shhhh." She pressed a kiss to his shoulder. "We're both here now, and that's what matters. You can show me what they taught you, and I'll show you what I've learned here on Earth, all right?"
"All right." His voice was a ghost of a breath against her hair.
She kissed him gently all over his neck, his collarbone, his chest. If he'd never had sex except with robots, she wondered, had anyone ever touched him like this—tenderly, with love?
He was certainly responsive, his breath quickening as she trailed kisses over his blue skin. His hands were all over her, one gliding down her back to cup her buttock over the fabric of her jeans, the other fondling her breasts and fingering the sensitive nipples.
If the dual-layered hair on his head was different from what Sarah was used to, his body hair was just the same, dark and close-curled on his chest and in a narrow stripe down his flat abdomen. He wasn't as hairy as some guys; along with the lack of facial hair, his chest hair was sparse, his shoulders and back smooth. And his cock was just like anyone else's—erect and ready, large but not tremendously so.
Eagerness pulsed through her. She wasn't used to guys who wanted to take it slower than she did. The slow pace heightened the need, leaving her wet and aching, struggling not to do what she really wanted to do, which was to fling herself on him and rub on him all over like a cat in heat.
She showed him how to undo the button and zipper on her jeans, and rose to her knees, hands on his shoulders, so he could pull those down.
"Can I look at you?" Rei asked.
"Look at me? Like this?"
"Just like that." His hands resting lightly at her waist, he slid back a little on the sleeping bag, gazing at her with that same look of wonder.
Smiling, Sarah put her arms over her head to lift up her breasts and give him a bit of a show. He sucked in his breath, his cock lifting eagerly in its nest of wiry curls. When he leaned forward, she let him take the lead, laying her down on the sleeping bag so he could strip her the rest of the way out of her jeans and underwear.
There was a considerate gentleness in him that she hadn't encountered in her previous boyfriends, the boys and young men her own age who seemed more concerned with their own pleasure than with hers. Inexperienced though he might be, it was obvious that Rei was interested in pleasing her above all else. With hands and mouth, he explored her body, and when he made his way down her body to the soft place between her legs, she found that, whether through training or instinct, there was nothing at all lacking in his technique. She arced her head back and let go, releasing herself to pleasure as he took her apart.
***
Her skin was soft. So soft. Rei kept losing himself in the wonder of it. Warmth flooded him, not just arousal, but the sheer delight of touching and being touched.
His people were not meant to be alone.
Her hands combed through his hair as he tasted her salt, learning to match the strokes of his tongue to the soft sounds she made and the responsive jerks of her body. He was delighted to find that he could read what she was feeling by her reactions, and adjust his own movements to draw more of those soft, ecstatic little sounds out of her.
Making love to robots was nothing like this. It wasn't love at all. This ... this was what he was meant for; he was made to give himself wholly to a mate, body and soul. Her touch consumed him. Her scent and taste filled his world.
There was nowhere he wanted to be, nothing he wanted more than this. His own aching need became one with the pleasure he sensed rising in her, until she bucked under him and he had to jerk back, drawing slow breaths to stop himself from joining her as she fell over the edge.
Sarah's gasps of delight faded to softer breathing. She pushed herself up on her elbows, looking at him through tousled sandy bangs. "Rei? Are you okay? Why did you stop?"
"I just ... need a minute," he panted. "They said ... a woman might not be ready again right away, depending on species, and I don't want it to be uncomfortable for you. I need—"
"Rei." She lifted her hips, spreading her legs to expose her inviting pink folds, all but shoving herself at him. "Please."
He needed no more invitation to slide into her. It was ...
It was everything.
She enfolded him in her warmth, and for that first instant he couldn't have moved if he'd wanted to. All he could do was lean forward, shuddering, to press his forehead against hers, as her arms wrapped around his neck. Her fluttering eyelashes tickled his sensitive tsinde, sending tiny electric thrills through his body, coalescing around the heat at his core.
"I didn't know ..." he whispered, and felt her stir beneath him, around him. "I didn't know it could be like this."
She moved her hips, and he jerked in a pleasure so great it bordered on pain. For years he'd tried not to feel anything, physical or emotional. He had taught himself to focus on things outside himself, to detach himself enough to stop caring that his body was nothing but a possession for others to use as they wished.
Now feeling swept over him in a tidal wave, the physical and the emotional.
He had almost forgotten that bodies could feel good.
Sarah pushed against him and he met her thrust for thrust, feeling out her rhythm as he'd matched himself to the rhythm of her pleasure-pulses when he was tasting her earlier. They moved together as one body. It was not so different from sparring for pleasure, in certain ways—moving in sync, matching parry for thrust. But sparring was never like this ...
Heat and urgency grew in him. He breathed out her name, and heard her gasp his. He couldn't tell if she was approaching another climax of her own, but he knew that he wouldn't be able to hold himself back much longer. He didn't want to. He wanted—needed—to feel this. All of this.
He went over the edge with a white-hot burst of sensation that made him cry out involuntarily, breaking the habits of a lifetime. Be silent. Be in control. Never let them make you scream. Now this rush of impossible feeling tore a cry from his throat, and Sarah added her own soft cry to his.
They came down slowly, together. He could feel her pulsing around him, sending shivery aftershocks through his body. Afraid that he might hurt her with his greater weight, he rolled to the side and lay beside her on the sleeping mat as he softened gradually inside her.
"I didn't know ..." he whispered. "That it could be like that."
"Me neither," she murmured back.
Rei propped himself up on his elbow to look at her face. The shadows were almost as clear as daylight to his dark-adapted eyes, showing him every freckle on her pink skin. She gazed back at him with sleepy eyes, their deep blue-gray making him think of the often stormy skies of his homeworld.
"But you've been with others, correct?" he asked. "You said I wasn't your first."
"You're right; you aren't. But Rei, I'm not with those men now. None of them were like you."
He couldn't help smiling. He felt light, almost effervescent. He couldn't ever remember feeling like this. "Blue?"
Sarah smacked his shoulder with her hand and rolled against him, pressing her cheek against his skin.
They lay like that for awhile, as the shadows of the moving sun crept across the wall. The flying vehicle did not come back. Finally Sarah gave a little shiver. "I don't know about you, but I think we might want to put some clothes on. I'm chilly."
He wasn't, but he sat up and watched her clean herself with a handful of disposable towels from a roll she found behind a crate, before putting her clothes back on. It was unexpectedly erotic, a strip tease in reverse, covering up each part of her gorgeous body in turn.
She kept stopping to smile at him, as if she sensed his thoughts—or maybe, he thought as her gaze lingered on his bare chest, because she liked looking at him, too. She wanted him. She liked him. He could still smell that wanting on her, along with the powerful scent of sex.
When all her clothes were back on, he reached reluctantly for his borrowed leggings. "Will your father be upset?"
"About what?"
"About ... this."
"We don't have to tell him," Sarah said.
"He'll be able to smell it."
Sarah wrinkled her nose. "Ewww, Rei. Mood-killer."
"He is very protective of you," Rei said, refusing to be distracted. "Will he ask me to leave?"
"I'm a grown woman, so it's none of my dad's business who I have sex with." She fell silent for a moment as she tied the thongs on her shoes. "Maybe we'll just ... not tell him yet."
"He'll be able to—"
"Rei, no, humans can't just smell sex on people, okay? Not unless they get really close. Dad's not going to be sniffing my neck, and I'll take a shower back at the house." She took his hand. "Don't worry, I won't let Dad come after you with a shotgun. He'll be cool about it. I promise."
***
In all honesty, assurances aside, Sarah couldn't quite figure out how to tell her dad that she'd been banging their alien guest in the mill. She brought the sleeping bag back to the house with her and stuffed it into the washing machine. It seemed way too weird to just leave it there for other people to sit on. But not as weird as her dad smelling her; ewww, Rei.
She could figure out how to tell Dad later. The afternoon slid past in a pleasant haze. She'd forgotten how good sex made you feel. Her whole body felt like it was bathed in midsummer sunshine, even when the sun went away and the gray late-October clouds rolled in again.
Rei and her dad spent the rest of the day working on the spaceship in the barn. Sarah helped them for a little while, but she really couldn't do much more than fetch, carry, and hold things—granted, that was all her dad could do either; Rei was the one who actually knew what he was doing. When that started to wear on her, she did some homework and put in a load of laundry while the sleeping bag dried, and then worked on a little bit of long-deferred farm maintenance. One of the hens had turned into an escape artist, so Sarah checked every inch of their pen until she found the escape route and blocked it with rocks. She called in an order to the feed store for more of Princess's special feed to help with the mare's chronic colic, and scribbled a note to herself to pick up a case of oil the next time she was in town, or preferably in Eau Claire, where it would be cheaper; the truck needed an oil change before winter. She peeled some potatoes and put a pot roast in the oven, before chopping some of the last of the summer's cucumbers and tomatoes for a salad.
Simple routine, as if it was an ordinary day.
As if her heart didn't sing every time she moved, the slickness between her legs reminding her of the secret delight she and Rei had shared.
What is Dad going to say?
If it had been anyone else—one of the local farm boys, say—she knew he'd be overjoyed for her. He didn't talk about it much, but she knew he worried about her. He wanted her to have friends and a social life, go on dates.
But ... an alien? And one who was planning on leaving as soon as he got his ship fixed?
Sarah screwed her eyes shut to stop an unwanted prickling at the corners.
Don't set your sights too high, remember? If you don't want unrealistic things, you won't be disappointed. Live for the moment. Don't worry about tomorrow.
Always easier said than done, when there was something she really wanted.
The timer went off on the stove. She took out the pot roast and went out to the barn to let Rei and her dad know that dinner was ready.
"And dinner that I ain't cooked," her father said, grinning at her as he limped into the kitchen, grease-stained and cheerful. "That's a change."
"I even vacuumed the floor."
"Where is my little girl and what have you done with her?" Her dad peeked under the lid of the roasting pan. Sarah batted his hand away.
"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.