___
T HE BATTLEPOD WAS never going to fly.
Rei's suspicions solidified into certainty over the next few days. He didn't say anything, as if admitting it would make it real. He and Gary, with inexpert but enthusiastic assistance from Sarah, spent most of the daylight hours and some of the night ones working on it.
But now that he had the cuffs working again, even if they weren't at full efficiency, he was able to use their diagnostic tools to get a better idea of the pod's condition, and it wasn't good.
He and Gary could fix the basic mechanical issues. This world already had the technical knowledge to construct crude pods capable of taking humans into space; there were pictures of them in Sarah's books. But, as he'd told Sarah, the engines and jump drive were beyond this world's technology or his own capability to fix, and he didn't think either one of those things were ever going to work again, at least not as long as he was trying to repair them in a barn with primitive tools.
Even if they jury-rigged a crude engine capable of boosting the ship out of this planet's atmosphere—he could think of a couple of ideas, and Gary probably had more—there was still the jump drive to fix, and without that, he was going nowhere.
But would that really be so bad?
If he had to get stuck on a low-tech world outside the galactic mainstream, there were worse options. The climate was nice, the ecosystem compatible with his own biology (give or take a few local plant foods; he was now scrupulous about avoiding that bitter-tasting "chocolate" substance), and the world's overall level of technology was high enough to provide comforts such as long-distance communications and indoor plumbing.
And there was Sarah, of course.
It made him wonder why he wanted to get off this world at all. What was out there for him? There was Lyr, but he didn't even know if Lyr was still alive. As for the rest of his sept ...
Are you sure they're all dead?
Yes, he answered silently. Yes, they were dead. For a slave, hope was poison. He'd learned that long ago.
He could return to his homeworld and see if any of his family was still alive. But there, he'd be a fugitive. Not that he wasn't also a fugitive here, but according to Sarah, her world didn't have the capability to contact the Galateans. Her people didn't know what he was. The Polarans would know. Many of them might be sympathetic, but could he really expect them to shelter him knowingly, risking the wrath of the Galatean Empire? Much easier to just return the escaped slave and collect the reward. He wouldn't blame them.
If he was going to be a fugitive anyway, he might as well be a fugitive in a place where no one knew he was an escaped slave. Sarah's people were still looking for him, but even if they managed to find him, he could slip away into the woods and live as a wolf for awhile.
Why didn't he just make a new life here? He asked himself that multiple times a day, as he listened to Sarah and her father playfully bantering over the dinner table, as he helped Sarah feed her family's domestic fowl, as he lay in bed with her at night and stroked her sandy curls, more relaxed than he had been since those long-ago days when he used to sleep with his entire sept around him.
And yet he kept working on the pod, trying to make it spaceworthy again.
He didn't know what he wanted. He wished he didn't have to choose.
He hoped fate would make the decision for him.
If the pod couldn't fly, then he'd have no choice but to stay. And if he'd done his best on it, then no one (Lyr) could blame him for not trying harder.
And he'd live out his life on this world Sarah called Earth, never knowing if Lyr still lived, never knowing what had happened to anyone else in his sept.
So what? I don't owe them—
But he couldn't lie to himself, even in the privacy of his own head. They had been his everything: his pack, his family, his world. Polarans couldn't survive alone. His sept were the reason why he was still alive and still sane.
He couldn't abandon them.
But the longer he spent with Sarah, the more the mere idea of abandoning her felt like having his guts ripped out.
His future was in space. His future was on Earth.
He could only choose one.
"I can hear you thinking over there," Gary said, and Rei sighed and straightened up from examining, for the two hundredth time, the pod's nonfunctional Vrik coils.
The older man came over, leaning heavily on his canes, and sat down with a grunt on an overturned crate beside the ship. "You can understand me, right?" he asked, eyes sharp on Rei. "Even without Sarah around."
Rei nodded. By now his implant had added English to its library of languages, though he still occasionally missed words when Sarah wasn't in the room. Without her brain to translate, he had to rely on the vocabulary and grammar it had already picked up.
"Good. There was somethin' I wanted to talk to you about."
Rei touched his own lips and gestured with a smile.
"Yeah, I know you can't talk back. You can just listen."
Rei smiled again and dragged over a barrel to sit on. He gestured to indicate "go ahead."
Gary hesitated, tapping his work-roughened fingers on top of the crate. "I don't know much about where you come from," he said abruptly. "Just what Sarah tells me, and she's not one for telling tales out of school. But I can tell you've been through some things. That right?"
Rei nodded.
"We had a war here, awhile back." Gary gazed off into the distance, not looking at Rei. "In a place called Vietnam. At that time, every young man in the country, when he turned eighteen, had to sign up for the draft. If you didn't have a good reason why not, they'd put a gun in your hand and send you off to fight. Sound kinda familiar, huh?"
Rei nodded again. He hadn't known they had things like that here. Sarah's world seemed so peaceful. He'd thought perhaps they had somehow found a way to live in peace, without wars. But perhaps there was no such thing, anywhere there were people.
"It's not like what happened to you, I guess. But it took me awhile to come back from that. Some guys, they never did. Came back broken in more ways than one." He smiled briefly and ruefully, and touched the top of the canes. "Not me, not like this, in case you were wondering. This is from a dumb accident on the farm."
Rei nodded, unable to answer any other way.
"Anyway," Gary said, looking straight at him now, "I guess the point is, I know what it's like to be taken away from your home and family when you don't want to go, and sent off to fight in somebody else's war. I know what it's like when the dreams wake you up at night. I guess what I'm saying is, you're not the only one around here who's been in that particular hell. I guess it doesn't do much good to say 'if you ever want to talk about it,' at least not unless you two find another of those things to put in my head, which, pardon my French, but hell no. But you ever want to have a drink and swap war stories—" He stopped, gave a short laugh, and shook his head. "Okay, can't really do that either. But I got a good bottle of Scotch in the house, and you ever want to pour one out for the friends we both lost and have a drink for old time's sake, one old soldier to another, you just let me know."
All Rei could do was nod, his throat tight. For the first time in years, he thought of the adults who had trained and raised him. Not all of them had been cruel. In particular, he wondered what had happened to Tamir, the old tiger-type Galatean who had been in charge of their sept when they were little, the closest thing to a father that most of them had ever known. Gary reminded him of Tamir a lot, now that he thought about it. He wondered if that old man was still alive, or was even so old as he'd seemed when Rei was small.
The language barrier hadn't been so frustrating since his early days with Sarah. He wanted to reply, but anything he said would be gibberish to Gary.
But he didn't have to be entirely mute, he realized. There were a few words of English he knew.
"Thankyew," he said. "Thankyew, Gary."
Gary looked startled and then smiled. "That's right. Guess you can talk a little after all."
Rei shrugged, and then Gary grinned at him, and Rei grinned back, and the language barrier didn't seem to matter at all.
***
Sarah could tell something was bothering Rei. This felt different from his prickly reserve after she'd first brought him back to the farm. Then, he'd held himself apart because he didn't trust them. But now he alternated between warm friendliness and pensive quiet. She figured it had to do with leaving, and she wished he'd just talk about it. It would make it easier, a little bit, if she knew that he shared her mixed feelings about his departure. Was he looking forward to getting back to space, shaking the dust of Earth off his feet, or did he want to stay as badly as she wanted him to?
But as long as she could make herself focus on the "now" instead of the future, she had never been happier. The world outside the farm hardly seemed to matter. Her classes were nothing but a distraction; merely leaving the farm for a few hours was torment.
She'd gone from feeling trapped and stifled on the farm to feeling as if her entire life was here.
What more could she want? What purpose in dreaming of moving away when the entire universe's wonder and magic was right here? Rei was the universe; through his stories, he brought all the galaxy right here to the kitchen of her family's farmhouse. Sarah hung on his every word as he told her about the other worlds he'd been to, carefully glossing over why he'd been there (though they both knew: See new places, meet new people, and kill them, Sarah thought, paraphrasing from a war movie she'd once seen). He'd begun to open up about his dead friends, and he had her in stitches with stories of Skara's pranks or his portal-making friend Selinn's mishaps as she learned to control her powers.
She wrapped up every one of these glorious fall days in her heart like a pile of parcels, to comfort her if Rei did leave, if she never saw him again.
And secretly, quietly, in her heart of hearts, she let her dreams begin to expand, just a little, from the tiny, ordinary, safe dreams that were all she'd allowed herself, to start to encompass all the possibilities that had opened up to her.
What if she did go into space with Rei? Was there a way she could make that happen?
What if Rei couldn't go to space and stayed on the farm with them? Could they hide him? Get fake paperwork for him, maybe? She'd read books in which characters obtained fake birth certificates. She didn't have a clue how to go about it in a rural farm town, but the internet would probably help. They could use greasepaint to make him look human enough to go to town occasionally, once the government people got tired of looking and went away.
It felt so daring, so huge just to allow herself permission to daydream about it.
Especially going to space. She knew it wouldn't work. She couldn't leave Dad, and she wouldn't fit in the pod anyway ...
But what if she could? Maybe they could tear out some of the internal cushioning to fit two people. It would be cramped, but she didn't mind being in close quarters with Rei. And it wouldn't be for very long. The pods were not meant to live in. They didn't even seem to have a bathroom. Just a few hours of discomfort, and then she'd be ...
... well. Then she'd be where, was the problem. Just as Rei didn't fit into her world, she wouldn't fit into his. She looked at the picture he'd drawn for her every day, as if she could memorize the sketches of his family so she'd recognize them if she ever saw them, but the picture made it clear that regular Earth humans were going to stand out in space just as much as Rei stood out on Earth.
Just like Rei needed identification to do anything on Earth, Sarah would probably need an ID she didn't have to function in outer space society. Rei hadn't told her much yet about how Galatean society worked, but there was no telling what kind of things she'd need that she didn't have. Maybe you had to get your DNA scanned just to buy food. And what did they use for money in outer space? She certainly didn't have any, or any way to get some if she couldn't get a job without the space equivalent of ID.
Heck with this. It was a beautiful fall day, and she decided to forget the whole business for awhile and take a ride.
Princess perked up considerably when Sarah led her to the hitching rail and threw the saddle over her back. Sarah almost never rode anymore; it just seemed like there was always something else to do, and Princess—who had been her mother's horse, once upon a time—was old enough that she didn't need much exercise. But she still had some friskiness left in her, picking up her legs smartly as Sarah took her in a brisk turn around the pasture to check that the saddle was correctly tightened and adjusted.
"Hey, guys!" Sarah called through the open door of the barn. The radio was playing inside, punctuated with the occasional clang of a hammer on metal or the whir of a lathe. "I'm taking Princess out for a ride. Rei, you want to come?"
Rei appeared around the corner of the ship. It looked completely fixed on the outside now, all the damaged shielding replaced with new, shiny panels from her father's stash of scrap metal. If it was really as close to flying as it looked, she assumed there would be more of a party atmosphere in the barn—but maybe not. Her dad was a typical Wisconsin farmer, close-mouthed and not inclined toward wild displays of emotion, and he seemed to have found a kindred spirit in Rei.
"Do you mean on the Hnee?" Rei asked, looking at her as curiously as if he'd never seen someone on horseback before ... and maybe he hadn't.
"It's called a horse, and no, I don't think she can carry both of us. I was thinking you could run alongside as a wolf. You don't get much chance to do that."
Rei's eyes lit up. "Perhaps I could take a little time, if Gary doesn't mind working alone."
"Dad! I'm stealing Rei! You can have him back later!"
"Behave yourselves," was her father's only remark from somewhere behind the ship, and the lathe started up again.
Outside the barn—and out of sight of her father—Rei stripped and handed the bundle of clothing up to Sarah. He looked much healthier than the first time she'd seen him, she was pleased to note. By now, the bruises and other injuries were gone as if they'd never been. He had filled out and put on muscle, and his skin gleamed a smooth, healthy (she assumed) shade of blue in the sunlight.
Farm life, it appeared, was good for him.
"Ready?" she asked, and he nodded and shifted, flowing into the great blue-furred shape of the wolf.
Sarah had hoped she could pass him off as a dog if they encountered anyone back in the woods, but she had forgotten that he was quite so ... vivid. And also so huge. There was just no mistaking him for anything other than what he was: a big blue alien wolf.
"If we see or hear anyone coming, you'll need to hide, okay?" she said, and he nodded, a very incongruous gesture with his shaggy wolf's head.
Sarah wheeled the mare around and set a course for the upper pasture and the woods beyond.
It was a gorgeous day, one of those rare north-country fall days that has no equal, the sun blinding in a nearly cloudless sky and the red and gold trees like frozen fireworks. Princess's strong muscles flexed underneath Sarah, settling into a smooth canter. Sarah knew she'd have to rein the mare in eventually, to keep her from overworking and hurting herself, but for now she let Princess have her head. The blue wolf ran beside them, tail flying like a banner. His tongue lolled out of his jaws, not pink like a dog's tongue, but a deep purple as if he'd been eating popsicles.
When they reached the fence at the back of the upper pasture, Princess's shoulders tensed to jump. "Oh no you don't," Sarah told her, and dismounted to unlatch the back gate and lead the mare through. Princess's coat rippled and she shook herself as Sarah climbed back on.
"I forgot what a little spitfire you used to be back in the day, lady. She's a nice horse," she said to Rei, who had stopped to watch the whole thing, sitting canine style with his tail curled over his feet. "But she does have a few bad habits. Jumping over things is one of them. She can't do it with these old knees, she'll hurt herself, but she doesn't know enough not to try."
Rei made a little whuffing sound and stood up, ears pricked as he sniffed the air. The woods seemed to fascinate him, and Sarah realized that he hadn't been in an actual forest in all the time he'd been on Earth, except for their drive through the woods to the lake.
Not that this was forest primeval, exactly. It was just a little wooded strip that wound between the farms, crisscrossed with bridle paths, deer trails, and the beaten tracks made by farm kids heading to the local fishing holes or biking back and forth between their friends' houses. Sarah remembered when she used to do that, taking her bike over every afternoon to play with the Haverfords' daughter.
Susie Haverford was married and lived in Milwaukee now. Nothing ever stayed the same. Except her. Stuck in place, spinning her wheels ...
Sarah shook off the echoes of the past and pointed Princess's head into the woods.
She kept the mare to a sedate pace on the rough forest trails. They passed in and out of sun-dappled shade, leaf shadows flickering across Princess's silvery neck and Rei's brindled fur. A sudden crashing in the underbrush drew the attention of all three travelers as a startled deer bounded away, leaving a trail of snapping twigs in her wake.
Sarah took a left turn on the network of bridle paths that led to an old beaver pond. She hadn't been there in years, but she was pleased to see the pond was still there, perhaps a little more sunken and shallow than it used to be, the collapsed old dam a little more overgrown. The trees up here had lost more of their leaves than the ones down in the pasture, which were still at their full flaming glory. Brown and gold leaves carpeted the surface of the pond and lay thick under the trees.
She dismounted and knelt to feel Princess's legs, checking for signs of warmth or other damage from the unaccustomed activity. While she did that, and then took the bit out of Princess's mouth so the mare could browse a bit, Rei trotted around the pond on a mission of lupine investigation.
Sarah sat on a sun-warmed log beside the pond and watched him. His body language was doglike— sniffing things, investigating rabbit trails—but with a wild grace like no dog she'd ever seen. She could have watched him all day.
At least until he leaned down to dip his snout into the leaf-littered surface of the pond. Sarah burst into laughter and called across the pond, "If you're planning on drinking that, don't expect a kiss afterwards!"
Rei shifted back, on hands and knees. He grinned at her. "It's just water."
"It's pond water, you fool. Beaver pond water. Do they have giardia on your home planet?"
"Do we have what?"
"Apparently not. Look, it's not a good idea to drink pond water on Earth. It can make you sick. Come over here and sit with me instead." She patted the log beside her. "I've got your clothes here."
He sat at her feet instead, long blue legs stretched out in the meadow weeds. "I'm comfortable like this, if you don't mind."
"I definitely don't mind. Tell me if you get cold."
Rei nodded and leaned against her thigh. She played idly with his hair, petted his shoulder and the soft skin above his collarbone.
It was impossibly peaceful here, the only sound the soft rustling as Princess moved about the meadow, lipping at grass. A light breeze rattled the branches of the trees and sent a cascade of leaves showering across the pond, fluttering down onto Sarah's lap and Rei's hair.
"Your world is beautiful," Rei said quietly.
"It has its not-so-beautiful parts."
"Yes, perhaps, but ..." He hesitated and turned his face up toward hers. The tsinde spots glimmered in the sun, gold with hints of green. "I don't think I'm going to be able to fix my battlepod."
She was afraid to answer, not sure whether he'd be pleased with relief or disappointment. "Oh?" she said at last, noncommittally.
"It's as I feared. I don't have the expertise and your world doesn't have the tools."
"You're welcome to stay," she said, running her fingers through his hair, around the back of his ear. "I hope you know that. As long as you like."
"I know. I ..." A sigh escaped him and he leaned his head on her thigh. "I want to. And I also want ..."
"To find your friends. I know." She petted his hair, fingers separating the coarse outer strands to reach the soft, thick underfur. "I want to go to space with you, Rei. I want to see all these places you've talked about. I want it so much I could cry. But I can't leave Dad. And I want you to be able to find your friends and get back to your life, and ... and I know it wouldn't be much of a life for you here on Earth, but I—I wish you could stay."
He laid a hand on her thigh. She put her hand over it, and Rei laced their fingers together.
"There's no rush," he pointed out. "None of this has to be decided tomorrow. Maybe there's someone on your world who could help me fix the pod. Someone at the school where you study, perhaps?"
"Oh, I hadn't thought of that." She had been so careful about keeping him out of sight, so worried about anyone finding out, that the thought had never occurred to her that widening their circle of spaceship mechanics beyond Rei and her dad might be a good idea. The idea of introducing Rei to her professors caused a tiny twinge of proprietary jealousy. She firmly squashed it. He wasn't hers. And he was right, there was a lot more scientific and technological know-how on Earth than what was represented by Sidonie, Wisconsin.
"That's a good idea, actually. I can start looking around on Monday. Or—no—if we're going to talk to other people about you, especially someone with connections, we should give it a little more time and wait until those government people give up and go away."
"I don't mind waiting."
"Yeah, well, I mind. I don't deal well with uncertainty," Sarah admitted. "I try to make myself take life one day at a time, but I've always had my life planned out in detail. The plans keep changing, but I always hated not having them."
"And I've always tried not to think beyond tomorrow. You can't, when everything about your life is decided for you by other people."
She pressed a kiss to the top of his head. "Maybe I could use a little uncertainty in my life."
"Perhaps I need some stability."
Sarah rested her cheek on top of his head and closed her eyes, listening to the rush of the wind in the trees, the faint jingle of Princess's saddle buckles as the mare moved about the meadow. Rei's thumb swept back and forth across the back of her hand.
"I had a crazy thought earlier," she said into his hair. "Have I told you about Halloween?"
"I know it's a holiday of your people and it's coming up soon."
"It's only a couple of days away. One of the ways we celebrate it is by dressing up in costumes. There are going to be lots of people out on the street in costumes, pretending to be monsters and fictional characters and all kinds of things." She hesitated. "You see where I'm going with this, right?"
"You think I could go out in public without causing alarm."
"All we have to do is add a couple of fake-looking touches so people dismiss it as a costume and don't look too closely. And then we can do anything at all. We could go out on a ... on a date." She could feel her cheeks flaming. "Do you know what those are?"
"Not in the sense you're using it."
"It's a—a courting ritual of my people."
"Oh?" he murmured. "What do you do?"
"You just spend time together. Often there's food. We could eat at a restaurant. And you could go shopping, if you want. You can pick out your own clothes this time." It sounded so banal, so unworthy of the risk of going out in public with him. And yet she wanted it more than anything. To be able to walk down the street with him, hand in hand ... "You wouldn't have to hide," she finished in a rush.
"I would very much like to see more of your world," Rei said.
"It would be a risk, though."
"My entire life is a risk."
"That doesn't mean it's a good idea to take more risks for very little reward."
"But there would be a reward." He tipped his head back, looking up at her. "I'd get to see more of your culture. And it would make you happy."
Her heart brimmed over, spilling happiness like a tipped cup. "It would make me happy. It would make me very happy. But only if you want to, Rei, do you understand? If you don't think it's worth the danger, then we won't do it."
"It's only one day." He reached up to trace her lips with the tips of his fingers. "I would like very much to go on a date with you."