Starcrossed: Perigee - A paranormal romance trilogy

by Tracey Lee Campbell

  "Sometimes they are necessary," I replied. Our eyes met, and she understood all I was trying to say.

  She sighed again. "Okay, I see there is no changing your mind. We'll talk about how we'll go about this another time."

  Ellen ate the last of her pie, and threw her napkin down on the table. "Right," she said, "now that's settled, we have more shopping to do."

  * * * * *

  It was the morning Aric and I would be leaving, and Jomi's kitchen was a hive of activity, with Phil, Ellen and myself making snacks for the long drive, and Marcus and Olaf hanging around to sample our culinary efforts.

  "Well, we have enough sandwiches to last us till doomsday," I said, wrapping the last of the cheese sandwiches in plastic wrap.

  "Wait!" Phil grabbed the sandwiches I'd just wrapped. "You forgot something." He broke off a piece of parsley from the big bunch in front of him, unwrapped the sandwiches, and placed the sprig artfully on top.

  Marcus grabbed one of the sandwiches and took a bite. "They're going on a road trip," he said between mouthfuls, "not to a five star Michelin restaurant."

  Phil shot him a look of disdain, and rearranged the sandwiches again. "The Michelin ranking only goes up to three stars... and if you really think a sprig of parsley on a plastic wrapped parcel of sandwiches is worthy of five stars, then there's no hope for you." he sniffed.

  Olaf checked out the tray of cookies Ellen had produced from the oven. Selecting one, he tossed it from hand to hand and eventually managed to get it into his mouth. "Mmmm," he said, "very hot."

  Ellen tossed the oven gloves on the bench top. "Who'd have guessed?" she said with a grin.

  Jomi arrived carrying a couple of folded blankets, with two pillows placed precariously on top. Saul jumped up from the dining table just in time to save one from toppling to the floor.

  "Thanks," she said. "Olaf, are you eating again?"

  Her husband swallowed the last of the cookie and wiped the crumbs from his beard. "No, love." he said innocently.

  "Lucy, Olaf has a tendency to stop at every truck stop he comes across, and all that greasy food - it's not good for his arteries." She threw him an accusatory look, but he managed to maintain an innocent expression. "Keep him away from it, if you can." She smiled at him affectionately, and placed the blankets on the table.

  "It's a long trip - there's a small bed behind the seats in the cab," she said. "Olaf hardly uses it because, well, he doesn't fit in there very well, but you can take these in case you want to sleep on the way."

  Aric entered the room. "Lucy, are you busy? I have something to show you." I wiped my hands and followed him down the hallway to the room we'd been using. His notebook computer was open on the bed.

  Aric sat down and leaned on the pillows, positioning the computer on his lap. He patted the spot next to him. "Come and look." he said.

  I settled down next to him. As usual, with me being around, the screen flickered but cleared instantly.

  "You were saying you were worried about your Uncle Tom." He was right, after Smith's threats, I had no clue as to whether my uncle and his family were alive and well.

  Aric clicked on an email message, and opened an attachment. It was a candid photograph of Uncle Tom hauling a bale of hay into the back of his pickup.

  "Oh!" I exclaimed, tears springing to my eyes. "What's this?"

  "I asked a friend to go and check on them. He posed as a photographer doing a story on rural life. They're all okay Lucy."

  He clicked through some more photos. There was Luke, looking tiny and self-important as he sat in the tractor, and Michael posing with the farm dogs. I was even glad to see a photograph of Aunt Janet looking snootily at the produce at the local supermarket.

  "Isn't it... dangerous - to send these?" After my blundering gaffe in the internet cafe, and my subsequent capture by the Tweedle brothers, I was terrified of using the computer.

  "We were very careful."

  I clicked back to the photograph of Uncle Tom. His face looked more worn and haggard than I remembered. As far as I knew, he was under the impression I'd just taken off, on a whim, and without saying goodbye, to see the world. I must be an incredible disappointment to him. I wondered if I could ever make it up to him.

  "Thank you," I said to Aric. My eyes were blurry with tears, and I blinked them away. "Do you think I'll ever be able to see him again?"

  Aric put his arm around me. "Maybe someday."

  "Smith knew so much about me, about them. And my mom... Do you think... are they still in danger?"

  "Not right now. They won't do anything to them. They're too big of a bargaining chip if ever they managed to get their hands on you again."

  I looked uneasily at the screen. Aric rubbed my shoulder. "Don't worry - they won't get you. You're safe."

  Leaning back on the pillow, I watched him as he slid the laptop along to the end of the bed.

  "Aric," I said. He looked around, and shuffled backwards so he was sitting up against the pillows next to me.

  He looked at me questioningly. "What's up?"

  "Are you sure you really want to do this? I mean, go all the way to Canada with me?"

  He raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Are you having second thoughts?"

  I shook my head. "No... it's just that. Well, what would you be doing right now if you hadn't met me?"

  He shrugged. "At the time I met you, I was working as a freelance graphics designer - computer games, that kind of stuff. Maybe I'd still be doing that."

  "You're an artist? I didn't know that!" It occurred to me there was plenty I still didn't know about him. The prospect of getting to know him better was appealing.

  "It kept me busy," he replied, sliding his arm around my shoulders again. "Anyway, what's all this about?"

  "I just don't want you to feel... obliged, to, you know, have to look after me. Living in a cabin in the middle of nowhere - you just don't strike me as someone who would be happy to... end up somewhere like that. Not nowadays anyway."

  He grinned at me. "Oh? And just where do you think I would be happy?"

  "I don't know - just not in the middle of nowhere."

  "I'd be happy living in the middle of..." he waved his hands around as he searched for a word, "... I don't know... a garbage dump? So long as you were there Lucy."

  I grinned, pleased with his answer. "Let's hope it doesn't come to that."

  He leaned closer, moving my chin so I faced him. "Honestly, I don't feel 'obliged' to be with you. It's what I want to do."

  He kissed me, and I reveled in the feeling of sweet euphoria which flooded through my body like a warm tide. I figured I could kiss him twenty four hours a day if there wasn't the need to come up for air, and sleep, and maybe a bite to eat. I smiled at the thought, and he lifted his lips to look at me. "What is it?" he said, amusement highlighting the blue of his eyes. I grinned and shook my head.

  "Nothing. I'm just enjoying myself."

  He laughed. "Well, that was the plan. Mission accomplished." He kissed me again, but lifted his head almost immediately. "What is that noise?"

  I turned my head to catch a small, repeating beeping coming from the end of the bed. "It's your foot on the laptop!" The computer was protesting as Aric's boot pressed down on the space bar. He shifted and closed down the laptop, moving it out of the way.

  "It must have been weird for you," I said thoughtfully.

  "Weird?"

  "Well, technology. When you think about it - living so long - coming from an era where there's no electricity, no plumbing, no computers, no cars... to, well this!" I waved my hand around, indicating the electric lighting, the power sockets and the computer.

  Aric shrugged. "Remember, I've known about the Innaki since I was young. They've had stuff which tops all this for a long time. All this is really archaic compared to their technology."

  "So you'd see all this electric lighting in their amazing flying machines and then you'd go back to your... primitive peasant's hovel where you only had
candles, and a cooking fire, no running water... and I hate to think what you used to do when you needed the bathroom! Weren't you ever tempted to try to introduce some of that technology to Earth?"

  Aric smiled. "They don't use electricity - they're way too advanced for that."

  "Okay, but still - it must have been weird to go back to living in 'the olden days' after seeing all that."

  He laughed. "Ah... the olden days in my peasant hovel! Fun times. I don't know - I've never thought about it. I was, and still am, happy to live simply." He lay down beside me again and pulled me close, his face barely inches from mine on the pillow. "I do know that a lot of the technology we have which has been introduced in the past century or so has come from outside sources."

  "Really? Such as?"

  "Well, the internet for one thing. Then there's the transistor, the microchip, fiber optics... the list goes on. It's no accident all this stuff came about fairly recently."

  "You mean aliens gave us all that? Why would they do that?"

  Aric looked uncomfortable for a moment. "Deals with the government."

  I shivered. Smith had talked about making a deal with the Innaki offering me in exchange for some new technology. I wondered what, or who they had exchanged for all these other advances. It didn't bear thinking about.

  Aric rubbed my shoulder. "Hey, come on. Let's not talk about that right now. You don't need to worry about any of that, okay? Put it all out of your head." His voice was soothing, mesmerizing.

  "You're doing the whisperer thing again."

  His answering smile was sheepish. "Sorry." He pulled me even closer. "I don't like to see you frightened. I just want to make you happy."

  "I am happy."

  His lips pressed against my forehead. "Good," he murmured.

  He went to kiss me again, but we were interrupted by a knock on the door. Saul put his head around the corner.

  "Are you ready? Olaf is all set to go." He disappeared back out the door, and Aric and I looked at each other.

  "Ready?" he asked. I took a deep breath, and nodded. Giving me a reassuring pat on my leg, he got to his feet.

  "Let's go then," he said. He grabbed his laptop, and I followed him out the door to say goodbye to our friends.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Twelve

  We'd been on the road for ten hours stopping only briefly at a trucker's cafe, yet Olaf, perched cheerfully behind the steering wheel, seemed as bright as ever.

  "I don't know how you manage to stay awake so long. Don't you ever worry you'll fall asleep while driving?"

  "Nah, I'm used to it. I only need a couple of hours sleep at a time now. I might have a quick snooze in a few hours." I looked out at the road ahead, but it was night time, and there wasn't much to see other than the never-ending, bland expanse of tarmac which shone in the headlights as the semi ate up the miles. Beside me, Aric had dozed off, his head against the window. I wished I'd brought along an mp3 player. Olaf had been listening to some awful yodeling music on the truck's sound system, and I'd only just convinced him to turn it down 'so that Aric could sleep'.

  "So," I said, in a dual attempt to be sociable and relieve my boredom, "How long have you and Jomi been married?"

  "Twenty one years this August."

  "Wow! So long!" Twenty one years. Jomi didn't look a day over twenty five at the most. Olaf looked to be in his mid-fifties. I presumed Jomi's race aged slowly, just like the hybrids. The thought made me uncomfortable. In thirty, or forty years' time, I would look so much older than Aric. What would he think of me when I was an old woman? Would he still love me? I didn't want him to feel obliged to stick around and look after me when I was frail and doddering. Pushing the disturbing picture out of my head, I wondered instead how a giant of a man like Olaf ended up with a sleek elegant woman from another planet. It was... kind of weird - like a big grizzly bear pairing up with a gazelle. Perhaps he was so big because he was from elsewhere too? How could I pose the question tactfully? In the end I decided to just come right out with it.

  "So, are you, like... totally human?" Anyone overhearing our conversation would have thought it ludicrous.

  He grinned and didn't miss a beat. "One hundred percent."

  "So how did you and Jomi meet? I mean, it sounds a bit nosy. If you don't want to answer, I'll understand."

  He waved away my reservations. "Her car had broken down on the highway, and I helped her with it."

  I found it ironic that someone who had the technology to travel from distant planets could fall victim to the faults of the comparatively primitive and simple vehicles of Earth.

  "Have you met Jomi's father?"

  "Yes, but he doesn't know that I know what... or where he's from. Jomi has convinced him that she's married me to 'fit in'."

  "That must have been weird meeting him. I mean, it's supposed to be uncomfortable to first meet your in-laws, but knowing he's, well, not human, and an important member of the Council... "

  "Yeah, it was. The whole situation's just crazy. When Jomi first told me about herself, I thought she was, well, to put it bluntly - nuts." He twirled his finger around his temple in a 'crazy' signal and grinned at me. "She showed me the wyk thing, and it blew my mind. Amazing, isn't it?"

  I nodded. Amazing was an understatement. The whole situation I found myself in was so incredibly surreal I felt my sanity could be on the brink of shattering into pieces at any moment.

  Olaf took a swig from his energy drink, and went on. "When Jomi said her father was coming to visit us, I expected him to turn up in a big shiny flying saucer type thing. Instead, he arrived in a blue BMW 507 Roadster. Beautiful car that - a classic. Elvis owned one. Worth a mint!" He shook his head wistfully, and then he remembered what he'd been talking about and threw me a sheepish glance.

  "Being an important intergalactic council member," he went on, "I thought he'd be wearing a long robe and speak in fancy prose, you know - sort of like the bigwigs in Star Wars? He was actually wearing a leather jacket, Levi's 501s, was pretty cool. He didn't - still doesn't, look any older than Jomi."

  "How old is Jomi anyway?" I was uncomfortable asking - it seemed kind of rude, but Olaf was an open man, and seemed happy to answer my questions.

  "Well, in earth years, she's nearly fourteen thousand years old."

  "Wow!" I shot him a surprised look. I couldn't fathom living for that long.

  "She's been living here all that time?"

  He shook his head. "No, she's only been here about four thousand years."

  I smiled at the absurdity of using the word 'only' when he was talking about millennia, and he grinned back.

  "Yeah, I know - 'only' is not the word for it," he laughed.

  "God, four thousand years? Think of all she's seen and done. All that history."

  "She lived in Egypt when she first came here."

  "So she saw the pyramids being built? That would be so awesome."

  "No, actually, she says the pyramids were built long before historians and archaeologists think they were. The pharaohs just adapted them for their tombs."

  "Seriously?"

  "She said they weren't built by man..."

  "Then who?"

  "The 'gods' - the people who came from the sky. In other words, aliens."

  "Wow, the archaeologists are way off, aren't they?"

  "They should know better. Or at least suspect that their theories aren't quite right. Think about it - the Egyptians documented just about every aspect of their lives in carvings, tablets. They left behind a type of written evidence of everything about their lives - except the building of the pyramids. There's nothing written about how they were built. Because they weren't the ones who built them. There are similar structures all over the world, and the amount of work and time it would take for humans to construct them would be phenomenal. The so-called 'experts' figures just don't add up, and they should know it."

  We both sat in silence. My thoughts were whirling around my head like snowflakes buffeted by
the wind. The history of the world as we knew it was all wrong. I was told in my history class at school that it was important to study the past to understand the present, and plan for the future. If everything we think we understood about the past was faulty, then we really knew nothing about ourselves at all. Humans are such a proud, even arrogant, species. We judge ourselves to be superior and unique among species by our ability to love, empathize, problem solve, and yet, having met Jomi and Aric, I realized such venerated qualities aren't unique to humanity at all. I stared out at the star-filled sky. So many worlds out there, so many possibilities. Our position in the universe, and our understanding of ourselves was built on false conclusions. What did it really mean to be human? And more importantly - did that question really matter, seeing as we are only one minute, almost insignificant part of a huge, cosmic unfathomable phenomenon? Perhaps it was better to value the qualities themselves, and appreciate that our human bodies are just one form which are fortunate enough to be able to experience those qualities. I suspected humans would be more tolerant of the creatures and environment around us if we lost the arrogance and self-centered attitude.

  "Thinking about all this could drive you crazy. Our history, our place in the universe..." I said to Olaf. "Just when you think you have things figured out, something comes along and blows it all out of the water."

  "Yeah, I know. I try not to think about it, and just get on with life. I leave all that stuff up to Jomi - she's better at it. I don't think humans are designed to worry about all that. The Innaki don't want us to be capable of thinking too much."

  "Did the Innaki really... design and make humans?"

  Olaf shrugged. "Apparently. Jomi's not too sure. She doesn't want to investigate it too much in case her interest is flagged up to the Council."

  "Just how much interest does the Council take in the Earth anyway? Don't they hear about the reports on the television, and the internet, about UFO sightings and abductions? Surely all that would eventually get back to them?"

  "Earth is just one of millions of seeded planets. They don't take much notice of any of them once they're set up, other than to look in occasionally to see what's evolving, and hear the reports of those charged with overseeing them. Jomi basically only lets them see and hear what she thinks is necessary."