by Meg Ripley
Joran watched as a human woman paused at a ticket kiosk, glancing around furtively. She had been the focus of his attention from the moment she stepped onto the train; while Joran had not quite become accustomed to the various shapes, sizes, and traits of human females—and he had not yet come around to find them precisely attractive in a sexual sense—it was difficult for him not to stare from behind the dark-tinted glasses that he had adopted as part of his costume.
She was of medium height for human norms, and would have only reached Joran’s chest, standing in front of him. Somehow, however, when she stepped onto the train, looking around quickly to find a free seat, she seemed taller—an anomaly that Joran couldn’t quite understand. Her clothing subtly emphasized her full, heavy-looking breasts, the narrowing at her waist, and the flare of hips that suggested that she was sexually mature—and that she would be a very viable option for reproduction.
Joran had felt a hot jolt of something he couldn’t initially identify; keener than objective interest, more potent than scientific curiosity. He had carefully avoided her notice even as he stared at her, and even as he followed her off of the train and into the station. It had been impossible not to see the sway of her hips as she walked in front of him; he wondered why every male in the crowded train station wasn’t responding to it. Joran had watched a great deal of educational material, excerpts taken by his superiors and compiled in order to understand the vagaries of human sexuality.
His comm unit buzzed at his wrist again. Joran tapped the screen, sending an acknowledgement. He may have found the subject he was sent to locate; the thought filled him with a mixture of heady scientific interest and something much more intensely personal.
The mission Joran had signed on for was to locate specimens of the human race—female, for the purposes of the current mission, though there were some among the scientific community who thought that a future mission should include males of the species—in order to determine whether a hybrid race could be created. From what little understanding the Khateen had of the human genetic code, it was more complex than their own, far less stable, and prone to mutations. The humans themselves did not seem to recognize the wealth that this trait had—their efforts at genetic engineering were still in infancy, and information gleaned about common opinions on the subject suggested that most were against the idea of tampering.
The question at hand was whether scientists could somehow cross the inter-species barrier between the two races, to either incorporate human genetics into their own code, or to create a new race that combined the benefits of both. Joran and his colleagues were each assigned the task of recruiting human females for experimentation; and Joran thought to himself, watching the woman walking away from the kiosk, looking around the station for the signs, that he may have found an excellent subject indeed. Everything about her boasted reproductive viability; her general shape, the look of good health, and something like vigor in the way she moved told him that she was likely fertile. Joran felt another hot jolt work through him as he surreptitiously moved closer to her, the better to take in details.
The more he watched her, the more Joran began to think of how he could persuade this woman to come with him. He knew from his research that human females were highly alert to improper advances; there was something he had read, a human essay, about a phenomenon called “cat-calling,” which suggested that if he tried to make an overt move—especially a loud or vocal one—she would reject him outright, feeling threatened by his aggressiveness.
Joran tried to decide how best to approach this female. On Khatanar, it would be so much simpler; mating was decided by genetic index, with mates chosen from a pool of candidates based on the need to unite and mingle families rather than individuals. From what Joran had seen in his attentive watching of human film art, this was not generally the case among their people. There was a complex, often paradoxical dance that seemed to result in failure much more frequently than success. And yet there were so many humans on the planet that Joran’s superiors had thought for certain that none of the women they took for the purposes of their testing would be missed. They would be less than a drop in a barrel, as far as the population of the planet’s humans were concerned.
He contemplated how he would perform the maneuver that he had seen called “breaking the ice” with this female as he followed her towards the newly-arrived train, and Joran thought that he would soon see just how well the various safeguards he had been told to implement worked to disguise him as a human male. If nothing else, he thought wryly, it would be a good test; but he knew that if he were not able to recruit this woman, he would be very disappointed in himself.
****
Adriana felt as though someone was watching her; she couldn’t put her finger on where the gaze was coming from, but nonetheless the sensation of being watched—and even more, of being followed—stayed with her from the moment she had gotten onto the first train of her trek until the moment she sat down on the second one. It was not precisely a creepy feeling; she couldn’t sense any kind of malice from the source, or anything that raised more of a red flag in her mind than the pure sensation of being watched. I have a can of mace, and I have those silly self-defense classes. If that’s not enough to protect me, then I’m doomed. She was traveling to visit a cousin; Susannah, who lived in a town so small that the nearest airport was more than a hundred miles away, was having a difficult pregnancy with her third child, and Adriana had volunteered to take some of the pressure off of her by cooking and babysitting the older two children while Susannah worked.
A man sat down a few seats away from her on the train, and Adriana glanced at him curiously. He was tall, with a lean muscular build that seemed a little too perfect, clothed in the most nondescript outfit she could imagine: jeans that bore no particular brand, a tee shirt that just fit him without being either baggy or tight, and a pair of sunglasses. His skin seemed somehow strange in her cursory glance; it was somewhere between brown and gray, not sickly looking but not quite what she was used to seeing. His hair was thick, cut close to his skull, and an inky black that didn’t look exactly like it was natural to his skin tone. Adriana thought idly that he might have been the source of the sensation she was feeling; but he sat easily, not fidgeting or anything. He certainly didn’t look like the kind of man who would just grab her, try to attack her. In fact, somehow in spite of her sudden conviction that he had followed her—she thought she might have seen him in the corner of her eye on the last train—she didn’t have any sense of danger from the man.
She turned away, looking out through the window as the train pulled away from the station. This leg of her journey would be longer than the first; she had packed a lunch for herself along with the changes of clothes in her backpack. Adriana watched the scenery flow past her and considered taking her food out. She was more bored than hungry, she knew; but something about realizing that she was, in fact, being watched made her want to do something, just for the sake of activity.
It’s not being watched, she thought after a moment’s reflection. It’s like I’m being observed. She felt less as though some creepy guy was staring at her from behind dark sunglasses and more like the subject of some kind of anthropologist; or some kind of science experiment. Adriana couldn’t quite think of how she had arrived at that conclusion—how it was that she could decipher intent from a guy who hadn’t spoken to her, who she didn’t even actually know was watching her—but there it was.
Before Adriana could decide how she had arrived at the conclusion, her thoughts were interrupted by someone close by clearing their throat. She turned her head, and the man from before was standing in the aisle, his attention obviously on her. “I’m sorry if I have upset you,” the man said, “but I saw that you were traveling alone, and thought perhaps you wouldn’t mind company for a little while.” Adriana frowned slightly; the man had a strange, almost guttural accent—combined with an even stranger precision in his enunciation. Where in the world is he from? Up close, he w
as even taller than he had seemed; Adriana thought that if she stood, she would at best reach his chest.
“I guess that would be okay,” she said cautiously. Adriana worried at her lower lip, and somehow felt rather than saw the man’s gaze shift from her eyes to her mouth. There was something compelling about the man; in spite of her surprise, she still didn’t feel even a trace of danger from him. “Have a seat,” she suggested, pointing to the empty one next to her.
“Thank you very much,” the man said, sitting down. Adriana felt dwarfed by his size, and shifted instinctively closer to the window—but the man didn’t sprawl or try to invade her space. “Where are you headed?”
Adriana smiled in spite of herself, shrugging. “I’m going to visit a cousin who lives in the middle of nowhere,” she explained. “She’s having trouble with her third pregnancy and needs someone to lend a helping hand.”
“That is very kind of you,” the man replied. He paused, and Adriana intuited that he was mentally translating something—his accent and his speech told her that he was definitely foreign, though it was not an accent that she could place. “Oh! I almost forgot, I should ask your name.”
Adriana stifled a laugh at the odd syntax; he was definitely strange, but it was obvious that he was making an effort to speak well, to be polite. “I’m Adriana,” she said. “And you?”
The man’s lips curved in a slow smile. “I am Joran,” he told her with an odd kind of firmness. Adriana watched him, waiting for his explanation of where he was going, and why he was traveling there. He simply watched her from behind the dark glasses, and Adriana started to feel—for the first time—slightly uncomfortable as the silence stretched out.
“So, Joran—pleased to meet you. By the way, where are you headed?”
Joran shrugged. “The middle of nowhere, like you,” he said. “I am to perform research.”
“Oh? What kind of research?” Adriana glanced around the train compartment; there were only a few other people in the car with her, and she hoped that at one of the next stops, there would be more. If it turned out that this Joran was creepier than he seemed, she wanted to be able to make a getaway, or at least get someone else’s attention.
“Genetics research,” Joran said, that faint almost-smile curving his lips again. “Actually, I am recruiting volunteers—and I had thought that you would be a good candidate.”
Adriana felt her cheeks warming; that was one of the stranger come-ons she had ever received from a man in her life, and she wasn’t sure she liked it. “Oh really?” she asked. She struggled to keep her voice level.
“I have offended you,” Joran said, pulling away from her slightly. “I apologize. I did not mean to do so.” Adriana stared at him in confusion. “It is just that I became excited when I saw you, because I am supposed to recruit—if I have overstepped a social boundary…”
Adriana shook her head, licking her lips as she tried to work out what was happening to her. “Why don’t you tell me about this research,” she said slowly. “And why you think I would be such a good candidate?”
The smile returned to Joran’s face. “My fellow scientists and I are looking for healthy h—women, of childbearing age, to study genetic fertility.” Adriana felt her blush deepening and wasn’t quite sure why. “You look very healthy to me, and I estimate your age to be somewhere between twenty and thirty years?”
Adriana shrugged, still bemused by the man’s strange demeanor and words. “I’m twenty-four,” she admitted. “What—what exactly would this entail?” She frowned in thought.
“There are some tests that we would run; none of it would be painful. We are interested in the genetic diversity of humans.”
Something about the statement sounded an alarm in Adriana’s head, but she pushed it aside. He was clearly foreign; he was also—she thought wryly—very clearly a scientist. “How do I sign up?”
Joran’s shoulders moved in what might have been a shrug. “You would provide me with your contact details, and I would invite you to the laboratory I have set up. There are many of us, in many different locations around the planet; we are performing research independently, but all of our findings are combined in one final report.”
“And it won’t hurt?” Adriana confirmed.
Joran hesitated—as if not sure he understood the question—and then shook his head. “I promise you that it will not.”
Adriana glanced out through the window, considering. “As long as it won’t interfere with my life too much, then sure,” she said finally. It occurred to her to wonder just why she had agreed to the proposition so readily; but Adriana thought to herself that Joran seemed mostly harmless, and at the worst case, she could probably investigate in some way, to find out more about his research.
“I will leave you to your thoughts,” Joran said with another strange smile. “But I will ask you before you depart the train for your contact information.”
“Okay. Could you—do you think you could send me some references?”
“Any security you need.”
Adriana watched as the man stood and gave her a final smile before going back to his seat.
****
The building at the address that Joran had directed her to seemed oddly out of place to Adriana as she approached it. Well, if it’s a new lab, then it would look different, Adriana told herself. Joran had sent her reams of documentation, all of which pointed to a perfectly legitimate study: abstracts and proposals, information about the study. She had read through the forms he had sent her along with it, perusing the information while she was watching her young cousins playing in the sprinklers. All in all, she had been reassured. Why Joran had recruited her for the study, Adriana couldn’t fathom; but she was apparently going to receive a small sum of money for participating in the project, which was always helpful.
As she stepped into the small, nondescript building, punching in the code that Joran had given her in one of the emails he had sent, Adriana worried her bottom lip. There was terminology in the forms she had read that had seemed innocent to her when she had first read it—but now that she was entering Joran’s lab, something about the wording gave her pause. “Subject agrees to submit to testing, including non-harmful probes, blood tests, and sexual function examination…” The last bit—sexual function examination—had seemed straightforward at first, but as Adriana wandered through the hallways to the room number Joran gave her, she began to wonder how exactly a person’s sexual function would be tested.
A door opened in silky near silence, startling Adriana out of her thoughts. The paperwork in her hands—which she had printed on her cousin’s printer and signed—rustled and rattled. A second later, Joran appeared; he was not wearing the sunglasses from before, and Adriana stepped back, her heart beating faster in her chest. “Joran!” Adriana clutched the paperwork to her chest, taking a deep breath to try and calm her reaction.
“Hello, Adriana,” Joran said, smiling slightly. As her initial startled reaction began to face, Adriana noticed that without the sunglasses, she could see his eyes; they were a strange, aquamarine blue—which didn’t seem to fit with his grayish-dark complexion and dark hair. She wondered idly if they were contact lenses of some kind.
“You startled me,” she said, smiling nervously.
“My apologies,” Joran replied. He extended a hand towards the paperwork. “Are these your forms?” he asked. Adriana nodded.
“Yes…yes they are. I—I feel like I signed them without actually knowing what you intend to do.”
Joran’s eyes widened slightly and he took a step back. “Come into the lab,” he suggested. “We can discuss things better there.” Adriana hesitated for only a moment before walking through the door.
The lab was not what she was expecting; as the door closed behind her, she looked around, spotting something that looked like a bed, screens that looked like they belonged to some kind of very advanced computer system, and medical equipment both familiar and completely foreign. “What the hell
is all this?” Adriana said, turning towards Joran with more than a little alarm. “Why is there a bed here?” Joran winced—or at least, it appeared to Adriana’s eyes that he had winced—and sat down.
“Please have a seat,” Joran said, fixing his gaze on her. In spite of her fear, Adriana had to admit that there was nothing precisely intimidating about the man; she realized that he was in some strange kind of coverall—not the scrubs and jacket that she would have assumed a scientist would wear. There were markings that meant nothing at all to her splattered across it.
Glancing once more around the room, unable to fight the sense of having been maneuvered into what could very well be a dangerous situation, Adriana sat in the only other chair, holding Joran’s gaze levelly. “Are you going to explain what the hell all this is?” she asked him.
“I will,” he said slowly. “But I do not think that you will find it easy to believe.”
“Try me.”
Joran took a deep breath and exhaled, setting her paperwork aside. He leaned forward, folding his hands in front of him. “I am researching female humans,” he said. “Specifically…your reproductive capabilities and genetics.”
“My…our…reproductive capabilities?”
Joran nodded. “You have likely realized that I am not… from here.”
Adriana raised an eyebrow. “Yes,” she admitted cautiously.
“I am not…from this planet; I am from Khatanar.”
