He had no chance to respond to this revelation before a matronly woman with short, dark hair and pretty green eyes appeared from the kitchen doorway. Judging from the smudges of flour on her apron and left cheek, she had been in the middle of meal preparation when her son’s voice called her away. “There you are, Mark, I was getting worried that you might miss dinner! And who’s your friend?”
“This is Arystair Savar,” Mark introduced casually. “Arystair, this is my mom, Jessica Bergert.”
Rys nodded his head in her direction. “It is a distinct pleasure, ma’am, I hope this isn’t inconvenient for you.”
“And it’s a pleasure to meet you, Arystair, you are most welcome. Another set of sneakers under our dinner table won’t even be noticed! Mark, have him throw his things in your room. Dinner will be ready in five minutes, so don’t dawdle. And tell your brother he can come down and join us, since he’s not contagious anymore.”
“Just pitiful, right?” Mark snickered.
“You’re only laughing because you didn’t catch it. Yet,” his mother reproved.
“Comes with having a superior body in top condition, germs just bounce off my genetic shielding,” Mark retorted with an outrageous wiggle of the eyebrows. “Come on, Arystair, it’s this way.”
Rys automatically scanned the interior of the house as he followed Mark inside, following his training protocols when entering unfamiliar territory for the first time. It was thoroughly middle class from the modern color scheme to the slightly worn furniture, not unlike the Bloch house, he decided. He found himself relaxing as he realized this; it was a comfortable environment to be in. Mark’s room was the first one on the right, and revealed a lot about the young man. There were posters of football players, flashy sports cars, and one for a popular video game that Dylan liked too. The place was reasonably tidy—for a civilian, that is—with only the unmade bed and an overflowing laundry basket in one corner being the exceptions. Through a door left ajar, Rys glimpsed a bathroom sink and vanity.
He put the bag where Mark indicated, and followed through to the bathroom to wash up a little. They’d gotten decidedly enthusiastic playing paintball, and so were covered from head to toe in paint smears, grass stains, and ground in mud. Rys was in and out of the shower in less than two minutes, which surprised Mark.
“Do you normally take showers that quickly?” his host asked in transparent surprise.
“Well, not quite.” Rys rubbed at his wet hair with a towel, which probably sent it in spikes every possible direction. “I generally take about three minutes, when I am not in a hurry.”
“…three minutes,” Mark repeated slowly, eyes squinting as if he were trying to imagine what that would be like. “Um, just a guess, but is that a side effect of attending a military school?”
“Well, that and being raised on Fourth Colony,” Rys admitted. “We were always short on water there, so we had limited shower allotments.”
“Huh.” Mark just shook his head, grabbed a clean set of clothes, and disappeared into the bathroom.
With nothing further to do, Rys wandered out of the room and into the kitchen, seeing if he could make himself useful to Mrs. Bergert with dinner. It was polite and only fair after all, since he was an unexpected guest. As he rounded the kitchen doorway, he nearly bumped into her. His hands shot out reflexively, steadying the salad bowl in her hands before it could fall to the floor.
“Oh, Arystair!” she gasped, stepping back in surprise. “I wasn’t expecting you down quite so soon, that was certainly a record for a cleanup. Good catch, by the way.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” he apologized, releasing the bowl back to her sole possession.
“No, don’t worry about it; I’m just a little amazed, my sons don’t ever get cleaned up that fast.” She regarded him with the same startled expression Mark had previously presented him with. Were both of her sons into extended showers? “I assume Mark is in the shower now?”
“Yes, ma’am. I was wondering if you could use some help with your dinner preparations.”
She blinked, drawing a blank for a moment as if she wasn’t quite following him, then surprise registered on her face. “Oh, my, that’s never happened before. Well, I certainly will not turn down the offer of help. If you could grab that pan with the roast and put it on the table—oh, make sure to put down a hot pad first. They’re in that drawer there, next to sink.”
Rys followed the directions she gave him, helping to set the table and transfer various steaming components of the evening meal into bowls. Everything smelled really good, his stomach was ready and willing to do this repast justice. The peach cobbler was especially drawing his interest; the aroma tantalized his taste buds, and the demands from his ravenous stomach were unrelenting.
They had the table completely set, and the food containers distributed, before either of the Bergert sons made an appearance. A boy of about fifteen wandered in, and looked around, clearly surprised to see a stranger helping his Mom. Rys assumed this was Jason, Mark’s younger brother. Even though they had never met, he supposed that the dark circles under his eyes, the red chapped nose and the pale cast to his skin were the results of his recent bout with the flu. He shuffled more than walked, as though his joints were painful and complaining. When he caught himself staring at Rys, he scrambled for something to say. “Uh…I’m guessin’ you’re Mark’s friend.”
“Arystair Savar,” Rys introduced himself with a polite smile and nod. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“I’m Nick.”
“Nick, Arystair, go ahead and sit down,” Mrs. Bergert directed. “Nick, is your brother still in the shower?”
“I heard the water shut off on my way past the bathroom,” Nick responded, dropping into the nearest chair.
“Then he’ll be here in a minute,” his mother responded in satisfaction. “Your father is working overtime tonight, so we can start as soon as Mark gets here. Arystair, judging from the way you two were decorated when you came in, you must have stopped for a round of paintball after school.”
Rys noticed out of the corner of his eye that Jason perked up at the mention of paintball. “Yes, ma’am. Mark asked me to substitute for Nick, since the competition is tomorrow, and he didn’t feel that Nick would be up to playing at the top of his form yet. We scrimmaged today for some team practice, to insure we understood and anticipated each other’s moves, then we worked out some new strategies.”
Mark finally showed up, hair still dripping, with a grin stretching from ear to ear. “You shoulda seen this guy, Mom. He’s like a freakin’ force of nature, an octopus with four markers couldn’t have covered the field any faster than he did. Nobody stands a chance against us tomorrow, not with him on the team; he is our new secret weapon.” Thinking about it, he added ruefully, “We certainly didn’t stand a chance against him during our own scrimmage.”
No, they hadn’t. Rys hid a smile as he set about the engrossing business of amassing food on his plate.
Nick’s eyes were darting between his brother and Rys, expression curious, waiting for more insights on the session. “So what was he doing, exactly?”
“Well, take the first round. Arystair is military trained, so we figure he’s gotta play differently than us, right? We played cutthroat, putting him by himself, just to see how he’d react, as we ganged up on him.” Mark grimaced, a little exasperated. “Or that was our goal, anyway. He turned the tables on us in short order, it was him ganging up on us!”
Rys couldn’t help but grin at that, remembering their faces as he laid down a withering barrage of cover fire.
“Quit it man, I see that evil leer of yours.” Mark waved a fork, still loaded with roast beef, at him threateningly. “It wasn’t anywhere near a fair scrimmage, and you knew it! We looked like a bunch of road kill hit by a paint truck at high speed.”
“I did warn you going in,” Rys responded mildly. “None of you believed me.”
“You warned us that you’re a superior marksman, but you fo
rgot to mention that you could read minds,” Mark retorted. As an aside to his avidly listening brother, who was soaking up every crumb of the conversation, he confided, “And the worst part of it is, I firmly believe that during the first round he was intentionally takin’ it easy on us! We signed up for the field to the left of the main gate, and were playing bunkers the first round. I drew the assignment to keep him pinned down and contained, so Jon and Dave were free to move. I’m running for the nearest bunker at top speed, laying down cover fire as I go, so Jon can maneuver into the fifty, and get a clear shot at him.”
“What’s the fifty?” Jessica asked in confusion, trying to follow her son’s story.
“It’s the center bunker on the field,” Nick explained. “It commands a clear shot of the entire field, in both directions, and it’s awesome if you can get to it first. It puts the opposing team at an immediate disadvantage.”
With this explained, Mark continued, “Only Arystair doesn’t run for the first bunker like he’s supposed to. He stops about three feet from it, shooting right past the bunker I was heading towards. I overshot it, and ran smack into his paint, like it was just sitting there waiting for me to arrive!” Mark glared at Arystair in renewed aggravation.
“You were running too fast, so that compromised your ability to stop quickly,” Rys explained patiently. “With the ground so slick from the recent downpour, I knew you’d slide farther than you intended.”
Mark muttered something like “freaking reads minds,” under his breath before continuing. “Dave saw what happened and ran up to the next bunker, trying to cover my assigned position. But it didn’t save him, as Arystair disappeared behind the bunker instead, and then he just casually takes a step out around the bunker, crouching at a low, tight level, and nails Dave to the max. He stitched him from one side to the other, right across his belt buckle! Jon, by this time, was halfway across the field, out in the open, cause he’s running like a mad dog trying to flank Arystair to get a shot at him. Suddenly there’s no place for him to go. Arystair rolled over and ran up, maneuvering the snake,” Mark turned to explain to his mother, “That’s a long bunker that covers the whole other side of the field, see, a really excellent position — and hammers Jon like he was waiting for his picture to be taken. This guy took us all out in thirty seconds flat. Thirty seconds. It was freakin’ embarrassing. The only thing that kept the other teams on the field from laughing us out of the park was they didn’t want to draw his attention to them!”
Nick was suitably impressed by this exciting saga of playing with the guy they found to substitute for him. “And after that, what happened?”
“What happened?! Things rolled down a steep hill from there, and we took a comprehensive beating with an ugly stick,” Mark responded glumly. “At least it did until we stopped playing against him, and he started teaching us some new strategies. Then things got much harder for him, he had to start playing with both hands for a change. He still won every round, though. I don’t think he even got any paint on his clothes, unless he accidentally rubbed up against some that was there from a previous game.”
“You almost got me that last round,” Rys consoled him, suppressing laughter.
“Ha!” Mark clearly didn’t believe him. “You were setting us up like a bunch of dominos, and I won’t be persuaded otherwise. Still, with you on the team, there’s no way we’re going to lose tomorrow. Are you sure that we can’t persuade you to join us permanently?” he added with a wistful tone in his voice, for the twentieth time that day.
“I am sure,” Rys spread his hands apologetically; shaking his head slowly back and forth like his head was on a gate hinge. “I have my own team, as a matter of fact. But I’ll be happy to substitute again if you need me.”
Mark nodded, disappointed, but resigned that the answer was a definite “no.”
Mrs. Bergert was watching him with thoughtful eyes. “Arystair, Mark said that you were military trained. What did he mean by that?”
“I’m from Fourth Colony, ma’am,” Rys responded simply. “I started attending the military academy at eight.” And graduated at fourteen, not that she needed to know that, or what that involved.
“Eight?” she repeated faintly. “That’s too young, surely…”
“In matters of planetary survival, Mrs. Bergert, age is not a consideration. I was grateful for the training. It meant my chances of living to adulthood were remarkably improved.” That suitably darkened the mood around the table. No one knew how to respond to that. Forcing a smile he quipped lightly, “It also means I can easily outmaneuver your sons on the paintball field.”
Mark scowled, as Rys knew he would, and promised in a dark tone, “Only for now, Savar. We’ll beat you some day.”
“Maybe after the competition, we can match my team against yours for a scrimmage or two?” Rys grinned at him in wolfish anticipation.
“You said your team is made of academy classmates,” Mark objected. “They’ll all be as good as you! We wouldn’t stand a chance!”
“How can you expect to win with such negative thinking?” Rys said sweetly, clucking his tongue in disapproval.
“You’ll pay for that later,” Mark threatened, eyes sparking in challenge and good humor.
“Put it on my tab, I don’t have any loose change on me at the moment,” Rys dismissed this with an airy wave of the hand.
***
That night Rys was settled on a roomy air mattress on the floor of Mark’s room. He was comfortable in this place, much more than he had expected to be, and happy to have made another friend. In the darkness of the night, sound was amplified, and he could hear every breath that Mark took in the bed above him.
He’d thought the other boy asleep until Mark said, “Hey, you still awake?”
“Yeah.” Rys turned slightly, facing the bed, even though he couldn’t see anything from this angle.
“I’m really curious…are you and Anne Dorian friends or are you together? I can’t figure it out by watching you.”
“Friends,” Rys answered, a little bemused by the question. “Now you have my curiosity peaked. Why are you asking?”
“Well, there are a lot of guys who are interested in her, but she’s never really gotten close to anyone. Kind of wary and standoffish, you know? Maybe it’s because she’s a politician’s daughter, and moves around a lot. But with you, it was like the two of you instantly clicked. We were all a little surprised by it.” There was a pause and then, “Are you interested in dating her?”
Rys didn’t even have to think about that one. “Yes.”
“I figured. You’d have to be crazy to say no. So why haven’t you made a move yet?”
“I’m not entirely sure how…” Rys slowly admitted. “Bijordan culture is very different in many ways from Fourth Colony. I don’t want to accidentally put my foot in my mouth. And by the way, I don’t have any actual experience in dating either.”
“Wait, wait, back that right up.” Mark abruptly twisted so that his head was hanging off the bed, looking down on him in the dark. In the dimness of the room, only his eyes were really visible, wide with surprise and disbelief. “You’ve never had a date? Really?”
Rys stared back at him warily. “Why is that surprising?”
“Because usually the girls muster some pretty efficient hunting parties and scoop up the good looking guys fast. The only reason why that hasn’t happened to you down here is because Anne’s made her claim on you pretty obvious. She has posted ‘Hands Off!’ markers you could read from a hundred feet away.”
Had she? Rys wasn’t entirely sure what to make of that statement.
“So, was that military academy of yours male-only or something?” Mark continued his puzzled tone clear in the darkened room.
“Negative, it was co-ed,” Rys corrected. “It’s just that there was no time or opportunity to socialize with the girls. Mark, you have to understand that Nova was like this terrifying, all engrossing monster to us, bent on consuming everything in
its path. It was well beyond your worst nightmare, and we had no chance of ever permanently defeating it. It occupied our every waking thought, in one way or another, leaving no room for us to relax or even consider socializing. I never thought about dating back home. I didn’t have the time or spare energy to even notice the women in our Division.”
There was a digestive silence before Mark spoke again, voice quiet and subdued now. “That’s…that’s really depressing, man.”
“I know. As hard as it was to leave, I have to admit it was a blessing in some ways. We couldn’t really live full lives on Fourth, not with imminent death hanging over our heads and stalking us in our dreams.” Rys blew out a breath. “The overall quality of my life has improved a lot since we arrived here.”
“So…if the only reason why you haven’t made a move is because you’re not sure how to do it, would you like me to give you some pointers?”
Rys propped himself up on an elbow, looking up at Mark with growing respect. “Would you?”
“Sure man!” Mark briefly rolled his eyes. “Guardians, it’s the least I can do. You’re helping us out on short notice and teaching us stuff besides. I don’t know her all that well, though, so you’re going to have to give me some idea of what she’s like before I can give you some advice. What are some of her hobbies and interests?”
Rys started drawing Mark a profile sketch of the likes and dislikes of Anne Dorian. Mark listened attentively and then started asking additional questions as they occurred to him. When he felt like he had enough information to go on, he began slowly throwing out suggestions. He also pointed out some general guidelines and tips on successful dating. Rys memorized every word, logging and categorizing this valuable data, to share with the other members of his team who were similarly unfortunate in their social skills. Perhaps one day soon he would possess the skills and confidence necessary to ask Anne out on a legitimate date.
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