by R S Penney
“I'm fine.”
Patel thrust her chin out with a glare that reminded him of his third-grade teacher. “You're sure of that, are you?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “Sure that those blows to the head did no permanent damage?”
He felt fine, but he lacked the energy to press the issue. So ten minutes later, Jack found himself in the back of an ambulance as it rumbled along the city streets. His Nassai offered feelings of comfort.
Jack closed his eyes.
When he opened them, he was standing on the front lawn of the home he'd grown up in, staring at the front porch. The sloping black-shingled roof had a pair of windows sticking out, and the green front door had a few scratches in the paint. “What the…”
He felt someone approaching, and when he turned around, he found himself facing a small woman in a white sundress who walked along with her head down. Golden hair spilled over her shoulders.
When she looked up, he caught a glimpse of her face and had a strange feeling that he should know her. It took a moment for him to recognize her as a composite of all the women in his life. There were bits of Lauren, bits of his mother and even some Anna all mixed together. A touch of Buffy as well. And a little Vin. “I thought we should talk.”
“Sounds good.”
He watched cars roll along the suburban street that she had constructed in his mind, watched children playing on the front lawns of houses across the way. They were fuzzy images, drawn from his memories, but the few that he recognized would be in their mid-twenties now. “What did you want to talk about?”
His Nassai stood beside him with arms folded, frowning down at the grass beneath her feet. “Changes are coming,” she said, nodding. “I feel it in my bones…in your bones, I suppose.”
Jack frowned as he stared across the street, sweat matting dark hair to his brow. “I feel it too,” he said, nodding. “And I get the distinct impression that these aren't changes we would like.”
“The Leyrians know of your people now,” His Nassai turned her face up to the sky, studying the clouds with a serene expression. “They have some interesting beliefs about the planet of your species' origin.”
“Earth.”
“Yes,” she said. “And they aren't alone. Your species has built several empires that stretch across the stars, and not all are as benign as Leyria. So far, only the vast distances of space have kept them from each other's throats, but that is changing. Your world will be a focal point of attention.”
“Can we trust them?”
“You can,” she said. “Most of them. I have discussed this quite extensively with my brother, and we believe your two peoples should coexist.”
Glancing over his shoulder, Jack arched a dark eyebrow. “Your brother?” he asked. “I didn't know Nassai had families.”
She offered a tiny smile, her cheeks suddenly stained with crimson. “The symbiont carried by Anna Lenai,” she explained. “The two of you were in contact for quite a long time last night. We joined.”
“You what?”
“My people exist in a shared consciousness,” she said in tones that sounded like the ones math teachers used when forced to explain the Quadratic Equation for the fifteenth time. “We become distinct when separated from the whole, but while in close proximity, we may join and share thoughts.”
The response shouldn't have surprised him. Joining was as natural to a Nassai as swimming was to a fish. Why wouldn't they take the opportunity when it presented itself? “We discussed the two of you at length,” she went on. “My brother believes that his host is lonely. We think you should join with Anna.”
“This discussion is over!”
He turned around to watch the sun shine down on the house he knew so well. The chairs on the front porch were ones that his father had sold when he was nine. For some reason, his symbiont had constructed the image from some of his earliest memories. “We have concerns,” she said. “There are things you do not know.
“For nearly five of your centuries, my people have had a covenant with the humans of Leyria. We choose only the best and the brightest, those who will use our power in the service of their peers. The Nassai are meant to be a check on corruption. But this Wesley Pennfield carries one of my kind. That should not be possible.”
Jack felt the blood drain out of his face. He let his head hang, breathing out a soft sigh. “No, it shouldn't,” he agreed. “So how did a sociopath like that manage to get his hands on a symbiont?”
His Nassai kept her back turned, folding her arms as she shivered. “I sensed it as the two of you battled,” she said. “Such malevolence. I would never have thought a Nassai capable of such feelings.”
“What was that saying?” he asked. “Something about pride and falling?”
“Your point is well taken, my host.” She turned around slowly, a solemn expression on her face. “I believe that Pennfield's symbiont has been tortured. That being the case, I feel doubly indebted to you and to Anna for saving me.”
The thought left him cold. If men like Pennfield could get their hands on symbionts – symbionts who willingly took part in the carnage – it meant that powers that had once been reserved for those who would use them to protect the innocent were now available to almost anyone. The Justice Keeper could rot from the inside out. “We might just have a problem here.”
“We do indeed.”
Jack marched across the lawn with arms folded, smiling and shaking his head. “You know, it occurs to me,” he said. “If we're going to be chatting like this on a regular basis, you're going to need a name.”
“A name?” she asked. “What would you call me?”
Jack looked down at the grass as he considered the question, deep creases forming in his brow. “Now, that's a tough one,” he said, nodding. “I wanted to call you Buffy, but that feels like copyright infringement.”
Tilting her head to the side, she offered an impish grin that was an exact duplicate of Anna's. “I would prefer a name of my own,” she mused. “I would be the first Nassai to receive one. It should be original.”
“Hard to top Buffy Summers.”
“I'm sure you'll think of something.”
“Wait, that's it!” Jack snapped his fingers. “Summer!”
The warmth in her smile was proof that the name fit. “Summer,” she said, testing it. “It's a lovely name. You should speak to Anna about what we've discussed. It seems like a good time to have allies.”
After a brief trip to the Med-Wing – a wasted fifteen minutes in which a doctor shined a light in his eyes, inspected his face from all angles and then concluded that he was fine – Jack made his way home. That proved to be a rather difficult task. Whatever the Leyrians had done had screwed with phones, making it impossible for people to call a cab, and now there was a backlog.
The cabby who picked him up – an old Italian man with stubble on his chin and a bit of silver at his temples – looked back over his shoulder as the car lurched into motion. “You hear that crap on the radio, kid?”
Jack frowned, staring down into his lap. He felt sweat break out on his brow. “No, I didn't,” he muttered. “But I heard some people talking about it. Whatever those idiots did has everyone spooked.”
“Bunch of gibberish on every station,” the cabby said, his eyes fixed on the road. A stream of headlights zipped past them on their left, each spilling a glare that made Jack want to groan.
He scrubbed a hand over his face, wiping sweat away. “I'm pretty sure it's nothing to worry about,” he said, looking up. “Probably some disgruntled employee who figured he'd go out with a bang.”
“On every station?”
The guy had him there. Jack decided to leave the task of crafting a cover story to someone more qualified. He didn't know how Patel was going to weasel her way out of this one. “You ask me,” his driver went on, “we've got little green men in this city. With all the strangeness, my wife wants to pack up and leave.”
“What do you say to that?”
&
nbsp; “Leave and go where?” the old man grumbled. “We got no family in this country, son. The both of us came over here in the nineties. Our kid moved back to Europe. And I figure if it's invasion time, no place is safe.”
They were silent for the rest of the trip.
Once he got home, Jack took a shower and delighted in the sensation of hot water easing the pain from his muscles. There were cramps that he hadn't even been aware of until they vanished. He usually preferred not to shower before bed – that tended to keep him awake – but tonight there was little choice.
Of course, he couldn't sleep; he couldn't even will himself to get under the covers. Too many thoughts kept rolling through his head. Would the Leyrians reveal themselves? What would happen to him if his situation became public knowledge? Where was Anna? Would he see her again?
Jack paced up the hallway in jeans and an old gray t-shirt. “Take it easy, Hunter,” he told himself. “They won't hurt her.”
With a bit of effort, he managed to coax himself into the bedroom, but he wasn't ready to go to sleep. Three AM would be making its appearance any minute now. He needed to get some rest. Just as he was about to start pacing again, he heard the front door swing open. “Anna?” he called out.
“I'm here!”
She joined him a few seconds later, pushing open the bedroom door to stand before him in black pants and a t-shirt, her hair in a state of disarray. “Hey. I'm glad to see you're all right.”
Jack sat on the bed with his hands on his knees, smiling into his lap. “Well, that's a coincidence,” he said, eyebrows rising. “I was about to say the same thing. I was starting to think I might not see you again.”
Anna stared at him with tears glistening on her cheeks, sniffling. “Oh, Companion, I swore I wouldn't cry.” She wiped those tears away. “I have to leave, Jack. I'm being reassigned.”
“Reassigned?”
She nodded.
Jack looked up at her with a blank expression, blinking as he pondered the possible implications. “What does this mean?” he asked, his brow furrowing. “Why are you being reassigned? Where are they sending you?”
Anna pursed her lips and looked up at him with stony resolution on her face. She took a deep breath. “They're sending me about as far from Earth as I can get and still be in Leyrian Space,” she explained. “They want their most experienced people working on Earth. That's not me.”
Licking his lips, Jack looked down at the floor. He felt a blazing heat in his face. “So that means I won't be seeing much of you,” he said. “Is this the part where you give me the big good-bye speech?”
“No good-bye speech,” she promised. “See the wonderful thing about living in an interstellar society is that we have this little thing called faster-than-light communication. I plan to keep in touch.”
“Well, there's that.”
He stood.
Anna moseyed toward him with hands clasped behind her back, keeping her eyes downcast. “So,” she said with a shrug of her shoulders. “I'm glad I found my way to this quirky little planet. Because this is where I met my best friend.”
He offered a small smile, shutting his eyes tight. “I'm glad you made it here too,” Jack said, nodding to her. “Because you, Anna Lenai, played a big part in changing the destiny of this quirky little planet.”
He wrapped his arms around her.
The hug lasted for several minutes in which they said nothing, content to just stay there in each other's embrace. Damn it, but he was going to miss her! “There's something we should discuss,” he managed at last. “I was talking with Summer.”
“Summer?”
“My Nassai.”
Cocking her head to one side, Anna arched an eyebrow. “Getting creative with names, are we?” she teased. “Alright, what did Summer say?”
He shared Summer's reflections on Pennfield's symbiont and the implications that went with it, their fears that something might be eating away at the Keepers. Anna didn't like that one bit. Most people were raised to take a bit of pride in their homeland, and it shouldn't have surprised him that Leyrians were no different from anyone else in this regard. But there was a fine line between pride and jingoism.
Eliminating hunger and poverty were notable achievements – there was simply no arguing with that – but any society that started to think of itself as the pinnacle of human achievement was setting itself up for a massive collapse.
There was just no sleeping after a conversation like that. So, they made their way to the living room and sat quietly for a little while. For the moment, Jack was content just to share her company. In a few weeks, she would be getting on a shuttle and leaving him here. And when that day came, he would wonder why he had ever thought himself capable of enjoying any of “the little things” in the face of such a loss, but for now, he was content. Tomorrow's problems could wait until tomorrow.
They sat quietly and watched the sun come up.
The First Contact celebration had closed down Albert Street, resulting in a crowd of several thousand people all packed into the narrow corridor between two rows of office buildings. Every single one of them was cheering, tossing confetti into the air with wild abandon. Anna felt sorry for whoever had to clean this up.
They were calling it Friendship Day. For generations to come, the eighteenth day of July would be remembered as the day the citizens of Earth had embraced their long-lost cousins with open arms. After nearly ten thousand years, humanity had come home. Her people had spent decades searching for the lost home-world of their ancestors. Well, here it was in all its glory.
How exactly did one make contact with a planet full of people who might just whip themselves into a frenzy at the revelation that they were not alone in the cosmos? Her people had started with benevolence. Filling Earth's airwaves with the message of their arrival had been simple enough once she had provided the words. Choosing those words had been the hard part.
Anna was the only one aboard the LMS Valiant who could speak English. Her days had been filled with conference calls with panels of her world's most esteemed diplomats while the Valiant took refuge from prying eyes behind Earth's moon. She had arranged a tour of the ship for Jack – he deserved a chance to get to know the people that he would be working for – but when they'd met for lunch, the only thing he would say was, “I'm in space!” over and over with occasional outbursts of “Space! Space! SPAAAAAACE!” for variety. After fifteen minutes, she gave serious thought to punching him.
“So what do you think of the ship?” she had asked him.
“So much space. Gotta see it all.”
With a great deal of editing and hand wringing from diplomats, she had managed to craft a statement explaining the existence of human life on other planets throughout the galaxy. Then her people had broadcast it for the entire planet to hear, followed by a series of detailed outlines of some of their more useful advancements: medical treatments, food production methods, clean energy.
It wasn't long before scientists on Earth started confirming the information. That was when her people made their first public appearance. Now here they were, nearly a month later, celebrating that appearance.
The Valiant hovered over the buildings.
A huge bird-like ship with long, curving wings, it stretched on for nearly the length of a city block. Anti-gravitation technology. It took quite a bit of power to keep the ship from falling to the ground, but Captain Taborn thought it worth the trouble.
Lauren Hunter stood before her with her back turned, staring up at the ship as it provided some shade from the sun. “So, these are your people,” she said. “It pains me to say it, but I keep wondering if they're about to start shooting.”
Anna felt her mouth tighten, nodding to herself. “These are my people.” She closed her eyes and bowed her head. “And we have no interest in shooting you. Honestly, Lauren, I don't know what else to say.”
She crossed her arms, stepping forward with a heavy sigh. Anna frowned, shaking her head. “If I haven't
earned your trust by now,” she began. “I'm starting to think that I might never manage it.”
The other woman cast a glance over her shoulder, her face as smooth as the finest ivory. “My brother cares about you,” she said, eyebrows rising. “For the moment, I guess that's enough.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“But he does care,” Lauren said. “So be careful with him.”
Anna felt her lips curl, a sudden warmth in her cheeks. The Companion bless all big sisters. “I'm well aware of how much he cares,” she said, nodding. “And I promise to be exceptionally careful.”
Craning her neck, Lauren scowled up at the belly of the ship. She blinked, clearly lost in thought. “Good enough,” she said at last. “To be honest, Anna, there are times when I forget you came from the stars.”
“We're all human,” Anna said. “Separated by light-years but human nonetheless.”
“I know,” Lauren muttered. “That's what scares me.”
Anna chose to leave it at that. Humans were capable of a wide range of behaviour; they sailed to the highest heights and sank to the lowest depths. The thought of Pennfield with a symbiont made her stomach twist.
Was there any merit to Jack's suspicions? She didn't know. She wanted to believe that the Keepers were a force for good in the galaxy, but a chat with Jena Morane had left her with some nagging doubts. Doubts that she couldn't stamp out. It pleased her to know that her people had turned over control of the SlipGate to the Canadian government. Even now, Leyrian engineers were spearheading an initiative to find other Gates that had been left behind by the Overseers. Soon Earth would have its own network.
“It's a new world,” Lauren murmured.
Anna nodded. “Earth is part of the galactic community now,” she said. “I suspect you're going to see a number of interesting developments.”
Bathed in sunlight that came in through the window behind him, Harry Carlson sat on the edge of his bed with a baseball and glove. “Missy?” he called out when he caught the sound of footsteps. “Is that you?”
His daughter had been out since about four o'clock yesterday afternoon, insisting on spending the night with her friend Sarah. This was becoming a trend. Last week, she had spent an entire weekend at Tracey MacMillan's house. She seemed to be trying to get out of the house as much as possible. “You want to tell me why you decided to duck out of our trip to Pizza Hut? Claire was upset.”
