by Lauren Esker
The first minute or two had been the worst, but she could still feel it back there, tingling and throbbing. When she touched behind her ear, the little lump under the skin made her shiver.
I could cut it out. Just take a knife ...
But what if it was actually doing something in there? What if she ripped it out and took half her brain with it?
And what if it hadn't even worked? Before she'd stomped out of the barn, she hadn't been able to make any more sense than usual out of Rei's musical, lilting words. Maybe she had been completely wrong about what he was trying to do after all. Maybe he was the advance guard for an alien invasion after all, and he'd just planted something awful in her head.
Last night she'd made it through dinner with an effort, trying not to act too odd, and most of all trying not to reach behind her ear and grope at the sore place. Her dad was distracted anyway. He'd been listening to the radio all afternoon, where every DJ and news anchor in central Wisconsin had been speculating about the bright light at the lake. Which meant the only thing he wanted to talk about was the one thing Sarah wished he'd stop bringing up.
"Damned government flying things around. I bet it's some kind of military test plane. They just don't want to admit it." Her dad's eyes were bright; Sarah guessed that he would love to get his hands on experimental government technology to take it apart and see how it worked.
If you only knew, Dad.
She wished desperately that she could tell him the truth, but it felt like opening Pandora's box; once she told him, she couldn't stuff that knowledge back inside. Would he call the police? Maybe if she started telling people, aliens would come and kill them all for letting the secret out ...
Is it my father I'm worried about, or Rei?
It was, she decided, a little of both.
At least she felt better this morning, the pain unpleasant but not too distracting. It was still cold and raining outside, but the kitchen was brightly lit and smelled pleasantly of frying bacon.
"You look peaky, punkin," her dad told her, turning around from the stove.
"Maybe I'm coming down with something." Or alien technology is destroying my brain. "You didn't have to make breakfast for me," she added, giving him a quick hug from behind, and trying not to wish he'd stayed in bed this morning; she had planned on grabbing a piece of toast and going out to the barn to yell at Rei some more for putting alien tech in her head.
She didn't feel like she was being puppeted by an alien mind-control device. But maybe that's what they want you to think!
"Always happy to help out my college girl," her dad said, navigating between stove and table by hanging onto furniture as he dished up her breakfast. He'd pay for the exertion later, but she didn't say anything; it meant so much to him to be independent.
"I'll do the chores before I go," she said through a full mouth. Once the food was in front of her, she realized that she was starving. Something to do with the alien implant in her head? Don't think about it, don't think about it ...
"I got it, kiddo. You'll be late to class."
"How about I feed the chickens and get the eggs before I go, then? You can do the livestock in the field."
"Oh, givin' me the tough jobs," he laughed. "In the rain too!"
"You're the one who keeps saying you need the exercise," Sarah told him. Stuffing the last bite of bacon into her mouth, she scrambled to her feet and grabbed the entire stack of buttered toast. "I can eat this while I work."
Clammy autumn chill smacked her in the face when she stepped outside. Gray mist hung in the trees, and the animals were a huddle of damp fur and smoking breath under the lean-to along the side of the barn. This was a day for working inside. Hopefully her dad would spend the day in the house or the old mill, and not decide to go work on the tractor or some other project out in the barn.
As she crossed the yard in the growing light of dawn, she became aware of a deep thumping, felt through her chest and the soles of her feet. Sarah stopped and listened. Gradually it resolved into the chop-chop-chop of helicopter blades.
A helicopter—here? Flying in this terrible weather?
Sarah turned and peered through the gloom toward the lake.
She couldn't see anything, just the diffuse blinking glow of the radio tower in town. After a minute or two, she could no longer hear the helicopter. Either it had landed or flown out of hearing range again.
How hard were they looking into this crash, exactly?
If the government knew an actual alien had landed out here, the answer was probably going to be very hard indeed.
Her hastily eaten breakfast sitting uneasily in her stomach, she ducked into the barn, looking around for any signs of Rei's presence. Nothing was visibly out of place.
"Rei?" she called softly.
The barn cat, Mouser, mewed from the loft, and a moment later, Rei came down the ladder. "Sarah," he said, and she jumped when a sudden sharp twinge flickered through her skull. "Hr'nalit se mreiti me understand ko?"
"Whoa!" She was too astonished to even mind the renewed headache. "I understood some of that! Say something else!"
Rei flashed her a fast, bright grin. "Hr'n toka time taking esteir completely-all then."
She didn't hear the English equivalent in her head so much as she just understood what the words meant. As she heard the alien sounds coming out of his mouth, comprehension of their meaning landed directly in her brain. She was still getting a sort of grammatical word salad, direct translations of individual words mingled with words she couldn't understand. But it was a vast improvement over trying to communicate with a two-word vocabulary.
"I forgive you for the headache," she told him. "This is amazing. Here, I brought breakfast."
He followed her around the barn, munching on toast, while she quickly fed the chickens and gathered eggs. "I have to leave today," she told him. "I need to go to school—do you understand that? School? College, to be precise. You probably don't have that in space. Or maybe you do. Anyway, I need to go to school and my part-time job. I'll be gone all day. Are you understanding any of this?"
"Leaving for a day cycle," he said.
"Yes, that's right! Oh my gosh, we can talk to each other. This is amazing. This is going to work better as this thing in my head learns English, right? Or whatever it's doing."
"Lroa'tak function-increasing se tobit two or three day-cycles."
"I hope you said it'll be working better in two or three days." She touched the side of her head. "Will it still hurt? Headache. Ow."
"Headache? Sorry." He really did look sorry. "I forgot srikala se anatiya too-long time."
"It's okay. I know you didn't mean to hurt me." He wasn't lying, she thought. He wasn't an invader doing something terrible to her brain. She didn't think it was possible to fake the soft sorrow in his eyes at the idea of causing her pain.
And they could talk to each other now! He could tell her about his homeworld. He could tell her why he was here on Earth ...
... and instead she had to go try to concentrate on differential equations. She considered skipping class, but she would have had to drive to Eau Claire for work anyway.
"You have to stay hidden while I'm gone, okay? Stay up in the loft. My dad might come out to the barn. And ..." She hesitated. Trying to explain through the translator's wonky grasp of their languages that government agents might also be snooping around would probably scare him without giving him enough information to be useful. "Just stay out of sight."
"Vaspar hidden kun to."
She was just going to have to assume that meant yes.
***
The translator was still collecting vocabulary and grammar from her brain, but the bits and pieces of her language Rei could now comprehend were enough for mutual intelligibility, of a sort. It was a start.
He fingered the implant behind his ear as he stood in the loft and watched her vehicle pull onto the road, its lights piercing the rainy-day gloom. He'd forgotten how much they hurt as they grew into t
he brain. In his case, the discomfort of having the translator implanted was just one small component of his general misery and homesickness in those early cycles.
Still, it bothered him that he'd caused Sarah pain, even with the best of intentions.
And you tried to attack her when you first met her, don't forget about that. Even though he hadn't meant to. It had been a deeply ingrained reflex, an automatic reaction to believing himself under attack.
But that was exactly why he had no business touching her. No business thinking about the softness of her skin, the vulnerability in the way she'd exposed the side of her head for the injector. The warmth of her lips under his fingertip ...
He pushed down the memories and went in search of something to cut the collar off with.
He'd thought about trying the laser cutter from the tool kit, but without a mirror he couldn't see what he was doing, and he wasn't quite desperate enough to risk slicing open his jugular ... yet. The barn held many scraping and cutting tools. Surely one of them had to work on the collar's tough yet lightweight alloy.
He found something he guessed was a primitive gas-powered cutting torch, but it suffered from the same problem as the laser cutter, only worse; it wasn't precise enough for cutting something right under his chin. There were some files and saws, and ... hmmm ...
Rei picked up a long-handled tool with curved cutting blades. He tested it on one end of a roll of heavy wire, and with a little effort, the blades snipped cleanly through. This might do it.
And if all the collar's functions hadn't been disabled by the power surge ... well, its anti-tampering measures would leave Sarah and her family with a blue mess to clean up.
He reversed the tool and guided the cutting end with one hand, settling the collar between its jaws. Gripping the handles at this angle was awkward; he couldn't get enough leverage to bear down properly. An idea occurred to him, and he braced one handle on top of the barrel, gripped the other, and—
The barn door opened.
There was no time to hide, not with the collar tangled up in the cutting tool. Rei wrenched backward, yanked on his own neck, caught the tool as its handles slipped off the barrel, and ended up tangled with it, staring helplessly as the elderly alien with the walking sticks limped into the barn, froze, and stared back at him.
For a long moment, they just looked at each other.
Rei straightened up slowly and worked the tool's blades free of the collar. He didn't have functional cuffs for defense anymore, but he could still run or fight. The barn was full of potential weapons.
But he sensed no threat from Sarah's parent. The alien didn't look hostile, just puzzled and curious.
Rei tried a tentative smile.
The alien said something. All Rei could catch was a female pronoun. Referring to Sarah? Since the male didn't have an implant, and with Sarah's implant out of range for syncing, all Rei could understand of their language right now were the scraps his translator had managed to glean from Sarah's translator so far. And it only worked one way. Rei should be able to understand a few words of the alien's language, but he could not make himself understood in return.
The alien was still babbling on. "I don't understand," Rei said, and that stopped the alien, who then said something else in a curious tone.
"No, sorry," Rei said. He touched his chest, echoing how Sarah had introduced herself. "Rei."
Hesitation, then the alien followed suit, and said something that sounded like "Garymetzger."
He raised a hand to point at Rei, in what Rei had come to understand was not a threatening gesture from people who didn't have wrist-mounted energy weapons, but it was still impossible to suppress his instinctive flinch. At least he managed not to raise a hand into shield posture this time.
Garymetzger saw this and lowered his hand. Instead he touched his own neck and nodded to the cutting tool. He said something, slow and questioning. All Rei understood was "off."
"Yes," Rei said. "Yes." He nodded vigorously.
Garymetzger carefully closed the door behind him and limped closer. Rei took a few steps back, putting more space between them. Garymetzger didn't push it. He pointed to the cutting tool, shook his head, and then pointed to the tools on shelves along the barn wall.
"I hope that means you have something better."
Garymetzger smiled uncomprehendingly and went to the shelves. Rei trailed along, watching curiously as Garymetzger picked up a couple of small saws, examined them, and put them down again. The alien turned around and tapped his own neck, then held out his hand, palm open, and crooked his fingers in what Rei could only assume was sign language for "come here."
"You want to look at it?"
Baring his throat to an alien was the hardest thing he'd had to do on this planet so far. But Rei thought of Sarah's trust in exposing her neck and ear to him for the injector, and he fought down both his wolf instincts and his deeply ingrained caution. Tipping his head back, he let Garymetzger finger the collar and tap it.
"Hmmm," Garymetzger mused. He turned back to the tools and picked up something not unlike the bladed cutter, except this one had shorter handles and thick, heavy cutting tips. He put a chip of wood between the cutting tips and snipped it cleanly in half to demonstrate.
Rei nodded and tilted his head back again, baring his throat.
He had no way to warn this friendly alien that the collar might explode when cut. But he didn't think it was going to. He was pretty sure all its functions were completely inert.
He hoped.
Garymetzger gripped the collar carefully in the cutter's jaws and said something. Rei decided from the bits he could glean that he was being told to hold still.
Not a problem.
Garymetzger bore down on the handles, grunting with strain. The collar tugged painfully on the back of Rei's neck, and then with a sharp Crack!, it parted and fell away, thumping in two halves into the hay on the floor.
It was off.
Gone.
He touched his neck hesitantly, fingers brushing across skin that hadn't felt the touch of anything but the slave collar in fifteen years. He could feel the ridges of callus and scar tissue around the edges where the collar had rested, the little bumps where its electrodes used to connect with his nervous system for punishments.
"Thank you," he said. The words were inadequate. There were no words in his language, in any language, for how much this meant. "Thank you. Thank you."
Garymetzger smiled. He bent stiffly, leaning on one of his sticks, and picked up one half of the collar. He turned it over with thick-knuckled fingers, callused and scarred from years of work, examining the exposed wiring and twisted edges of the metal.
As Rei blinked away sudden tears and got a grip on himself, a thought occurred to him.
This was an alien who was curious about mechanical things. If Garymetzger was the one who used the tools in the barn, then he must be some sort of mechanic or engineer.
True, he wouldn't know the specifics of Galatean technology; it was light-years beyond anything this planet had, at least from what Rei had seen so far.
But, with Rei to help and Sarah to translate, maybe Garymetzger could figure out how to fix a Galatean ship.
8
___
S ARAH PULLED INTO the farm driveway in a dreary evening rain. The truck's windshield wipers slop-slopped back and forth, leaving a smeary trail in their wake. Better add new wiper blades to the list of things to buy, she thought. There was always some small thing to buy or fix on a farm.
At least the truck was still running smoothly under her dad's skilled hands. They used to have a second car back when her mom was alive, a newish Subaru that Mom used for commuting to her job in town. They'd had to sell it as crushing medical bills piled up on them, and now they were completely dependent on the aging truck. So far, none of her dad's project cars—acquired for free from neighbors, scattered around the farm in various states of disassembly—had yielded a second working vehicle.
; Sarah shuddered at the thought of how close she'd come to losing the truck at the lake two nights ago. If Rei's ship had landed closer to shore—
But it didn't. It's fine. You couldn't have known.
It was so easy to forget about all this weirdness when she wasn't at the farm. Today had felt so normal. Like stepping through a portal, from the part of her world where Rei existed, to a world of normal classes and work, where the bright light at the lake on Saturday night was no more than a cause for idle speculation along with the latest international and political news.
As she stepped down from the truck and headed toward the farmhouse lights shining warm and bright through the rain, she could almost imagine the last two days had never happened at all. Aliens and spaceships! Maybe she really had lost her mind. Maybe it was all just a vivid dream.
But no. All she had to do was finger the little nodule behind her ear as a reminder. The headache had faded over the course of the day, helped along with some Motrin she'd borrowed from a classmate, but every once in a while it still sent a sharp twinge through her skull. This was real, all right, Rei and the implant and all of it.
"Dad?" she called, dropping the truck keys in the bowl on the kitchen counter, where they clattered among stray bolts and a detached carburetor. "Dad, I'm home."
The house was utterly quiet, the stove cold and dinner unstarted. He was obviously out on the farm somewhere.
Not in the barn, I hope! She'd left them both unattended all day. What Rei had been up to? She grabbed the sheepskin jacket off its hook and hurried out the door.
The lights were on in the barn. Whether that was a good or bad sign, she couldn't begin to guess. Surely Rei had the sense to stay out of sight? Sarah cautiously pushed the door open. Her dad liked to have the radio on while he worked, and she could hear country music coming tinnily from somewhere nearby.
