by Greg Curtis
Some of the other wall coverings were also weavings, rugs and the like which, while of strange patterns and colours, seemed human enough in design. But some were far more alien. Some appeared wooden and were made into statues and carvings of creatures that were nothing like he’d ever imagined. On one wall there was a painting of a city on some alien world with endless rainbows instead of a blue sky. There were also a number of metal sculptures that twisted his eyes and his mind when he tried to stare at them.
Taken as a whole he realized she was rather quickly turning her utilitarian quarters into a home. A place that looked as though she had lived there for years. Not bad for having been here for less than two months, and most of that spent with him. She must have been very busy that first week while she’d been recovering from her injury.
Mixed in with that was other stuff that he understood perfectly. Framed documents, probably her people's equivalent of degrees. A piece of alien writing over the front door that he would have bet dollars to doughnuts was a blessing. She was very serious about her faith. Then there were the family snapshots. Photos almost exactly like anyone else’s except that they truly seemed three dimensional. Photos that even drew him away from the alien vista surrounding them and back to her.
Cyrea showed him first her family, her parents and her brother and sister, and told him how much she missed them. She didn’t really have to tell him though; it was in her voice when she spoke of them. It was in their photos as they smiled back serenely across the light years.
Her father was a farmer, her mother a school teacher, while her brother and sister both had gone into medicine as their parents had wanted. Cyrea was the black sheep to a certain extent, but not terribly so. Besides, she had done well in her studies and in her career too, and it gave them something different to talk about when they got together for family occasions.
“I’m glad you weren’t the same. If you’d gone into medicine I’d never have met you.” He kissed her with every word, regretting again having been raised an orphan, and knowing from her how much he had missed out on, and suddenly understanding how much she gave to him.
“You think they’d accept me?” Until he asked the question he didn’t even know how serious he was, but suddenly it meant a lot to him as he remembered that he was as alien to her and her family as she was to him. They would have to be an incredibly understanding family. Especially when he considered what they’d seen of him so far on their equivalent of TV. Him making love to their daughter after they had nearly beaten each other senseless. Him as a blood crazed lunatic rampaging through a ship. If he was her father he'd shoot him.
“Ohh yes. They’ll love you. You’re so big and gentle, they’ll eat you up.” She was telling the truth as she knew it, but he also guessed that that didn’t mean she was right. After all she was somewhat biased. But he liked the thought.
“That’s only fair since I intend to eat their daughter up!”
Next she showed him her home and her world, and he studied the images with undying curiosity. He’d never seen another world and until recently had never even thought he could, but suddenly it was there before him, and he had to know.
First she showed him a panorama of her home. The family lived on a farm, raising what looked suspiciously like the sheep from her mural, and they had a magnificent vista surrounding them. Green was his first impression. Miles upon miles of verdant green hills, covered in what could only be grass. Deep lush green grass. In the foreground were trees, orange trees, perhaps a little like maples, but the foliage was thicker and the leaves were wrong. They were more like orange cedar trees. But they were beautiful.
Cyrea called them York trees and said they dotted the entire world, spreading their shade where it would do the most good. In the spring she told him, for two whole days they would drop their fruit, and the people would come out to eat the fruit all around them, and celebrate. For those two days young couples would mate in droves, and older couples would try to conceive babies, because it was considered a blessed time. A time when the bounty of the world shone on the people. A sign from Mother Lei as they called her. The equivalent of Mother Earth he supposed.
Then there were the pictures of her family, snapshots identical to anyone else’s. The only difference was that her family had a little more body hair. But as she showed him them, and as he listened to her talking about them in such fond terms, he discovered other things. There was a familial similarity. Maybe he’d been with Cyrea too long, but he could tell her apart from her shipmates without even trying. Her build, her colouring, her face, all were utterly distinctive to him. And her family shared them too. Somewhere deep inside he realised he also wanted to meet them. To thank them for raising such a wonderful woman. And to make sure they knew he wasn’t a crazed lunatic.
Next she showed him her home, something that looked like no house he’d ever seen. It looked more like an oversized cartoon railway carriage, complete with round windows, and it had not a single straight edge on it. But then it also had an inherent logic to it that made sense in a strange way. As if its wrongness was just because he didn’t really understand it. It had an internal consistency that perhaps only an artist would truly understand, but he at least had enough smarts to recognise that there was something there that made sense.
The next image was of all things, her horse. It didn’t really look much like a horse, more like a camel without its hump, but he understood the concept immediately when he saw the picture of her as a child riding it. A different world in so many ways, but it still had its farm girls and their ponies. She'd called the creature Mun, which in her language meant beauty, and told him at length how it was the most wonderful pony in existence, while he tried hard not to judge the stupid looking beast and failed. But perhaps she thought earthly horses were ugly.
Then there was a picture of her first car. He knew it was a car, even if it had no wheels, hovered two feet above the ground, and was made of tinted glass. For all its wonder, he also saw it had a weathered look about it, and he guessed it was probably a second hand jalopy, which her parents had in all probability hated. Chances were she’d broken numerous speeding laws in it, probably made out with all the wrong boys in it, and used it to escape from school once or twice. He could have guaranteed she would have had a string of guys waiting to ride with her. Like a fool he had to ask.
“Oh no. I’d never have had boys in the car. They were messy and smelly. Besides they only wanted one thing!” Which was apparently the same the universe over. David suddenly felt closer to the Leinians than ever before even as he laughed.
“Can’t blame them for that. I’d have wanted a ride too. So when was your first time? University?” He was curious, suddenly wanting to know everything about her childhood.
“No, no, not till I was much older.” She seemed surprised by his question, not angry or disappointed, just surprised. But was it more than that? He knew she was hiding something from him. Not something bad, just awkward. The strange thing was he knew she also wanted to tell him. She was slowly working up the courage. He waited patiently.
“He was older than me and he was kind. When I was alone and miserable being so far from home, he brought me into his home and cared for me. A nice home, by a lake, where he looked after my wounds.” David nearly choked as the truth dawned on him.
“Me? I was your first? I, I, had no idea. My God. I mean...” Actually he had no idea what he meant, he was just shocked. She was a grown woman, in all ways; she should have been married, with children, and in human culture probably divorced by now, and instead she’d never had sex until a few short weeks before. He kept spluttering like that for some time, trying vaguely to understand. And deep inside he was worried, scared all over again that he might have done something with her that she might one day regret.
“Why do you think it took me so long to accept you? And why do you think I was such a mess until we did? I was scared. I was utterly confused. I had no idea what to expect and you were completely unexpe
cted. I wanted you and I tried to deny it, since it didn’t make any sense, and I was scared of you too, for all the right reasons as well as the wrong ones.” Sometimes David did know what to do, and for once this was one of them. He kissed her quickly, firmly, before she became scared again.
“I am honoured to be your first.” Which was actually true, though he was also still somewhat hollow inside. Yet he had to ask himself; if he had known before, would he still have done it? He had a horrible feeling he might have. Certainly if it had been exactly the same circumstances, lying on that floor, he just might have. It hadn’t really been that much of a choice for him either.
“It’s just that I never thought...” He trailed off, unable to say what he’d never thought, and knowing she knew anyway. “I mean it’s not normal... for humans. I mean, for us it’s normal to play around.” And yet what they both knew he was really trying to say was that he had been with other women. He had been married.
“I know you’ve been with others. In your world you’d be strange if you hadn’t. I can accept that. But in my world it’s different. We don’t play around. We don’t pick and choose, we can’t.” Which made him wonder again how truthful she was when she said that she understood. He knew she meant it, but then that was from her head. In her heart it was surely another story, one perhaps even she didn’t truly understand. But there were things he could say to make it easier. Things he had to say.
“Cyrea. In all my life I have never made love to anybody as I have with you. I’ve never even imagined it. I only wish you’d been there at the beginning.” She heard him, she listened, and he knew that she knew he meant it. He only hoped she could accept it. He would tell her again and again until she did. It was the only way.
“There’s something else you need to know.” If she had been nervous before, suddenly she was beside herself.
“You will also be my last. My faith doesn’t allow for more than one mate in a lifetime. Nor does my species. It’s built almost into our genes that we will find one mate and that’s it. That’s why it was such a terribly difficult time for me. To know somewhere deep down inside that you were my mate, and you weren’t even Leinian.” He kissed her again, covering for his shock and hoping she didn’t notice. If she did she didn’t tell him. At least she kissed him back.
“But it was also a wonderful surprise. A blessing. I’m old for my world to be mating. Too old. I’m twenty nine of your years old, nearly five years past my normal bonding time. Until I met you I thought I was destined to be alone. That’s why I went into the Service. I thought that since I would never have to worry about being a mate or mother I should give myself to my people.” He kissed her some more, still trying to cover his shock and his secret shame; that he would one day have to leave her. Either the mission would end and she would go home and he would stay, or they would be caught and the same thing would happen. He prayed that that terrible day would be a long way off, but somehow he doubted it. Not when their shuttles were falling out of the sky and they were busy telling all and sundry of their existence.
“I had always felt incomplete. There are a few of my people who never find their mate, and it’s a lonely thing to be. You feel as though you’ve missed out, as though there’s an emptiness inside you and it feels cold. But until I met you, I had not realized how deep those feelings ran. You filled me, heart and soul, and you made my life worth living. Finding you, loving you was a terrible shock, but the most wonderful surprise. I didn’t regret it that first time, and I don’t regret it now.” But she was worried.
“Nor me. You were a shock to me too, in so many ways. But a wonderful one. I joined the army at seventeen, married at twenty, got divorced two truly miserable years later, and then went fully into the covert services.” His life story just came babbling out as he suddenly lost control of his mouth. Yet every word was the truth and he had to tell her. Her honesty and the way she had stripped herself bare to him demanded it. He needed her to know him just as fully.
“From that point on my life became more and more lonely as I learned never to trust anybody. I lived all over the world moving from battlefield to city, city to battlefield, sometimes moving weekly. Whenever I met someone I liked, I had to lie to them about everything I was. Who I was, what I did, even my name. Spies don’t make good family men. I retired when I was thirty five, but the bullet wasn’t the reason. It was the excuse.”
“I was just so tired of that life. The secrets, the lies, and the evil that so many people do in the name of their country. This country too. I felt unclean, and like Lady MacBeth I couldn’t wash the blood and filth away. I was totally drained. I didn’t know what was right or wrong any longer, and I didn’t even know who I was. Getting shot was a gift.” Which was only the truth. It had allowed him to retire with dignity and a decent pension, and without ever giving in to his need to tell all. Before the shooting it had been on his mind like a cancer. Afterwards, he had been able to let it sink into the background.
“Yet even when I began to live apart from my past, I found my past kept me apart from life. I couldn’t tell anybody who I was or what I’d done. I couldn’t get close to anyone without every intelligence agent in the country knowing about it and potentially using it against me. In time I also discovered that I didn’t really like people. That was a shock. I’d always thought I did and that they were the reason I did what I did. But somewhere along the way I seemed to have lost it.”
“I’d seen so much evil that I found I was always looking for the bad in people. Waiting for the betrayal, the lie. Or maybe who I was, who I had wanted to be had just been too well hidden for too long. It had got lost. And I didn’t even know who I was any longer.” Yet maybe the truth was that he’d discovered he didn’t really know people any longer. He’d been fooled too many times with seemingly decent human beings hiding abominable secrets. He didn’t trust.
“Then you turned up out of nowhere, breaking every rule I’d ever obeyed. You represented the greatest security threat I’d ever imagined, but you needed my help and somehow I couldn’t refuse you. If nothing else I knew you weren’t a double agent or some enemy assassin. You were therefore someone I couldn’t doubt. Someone I could trust. You don’t know how special that is. Neither did I until I met you. I haven’t trusted anybody in a very long time.”
“And you were fascinating. I was just so enthralled by the whole idea of aliens on Earth, and while maybe it took a while to understand, I was also falling for you heavily. I wanted to know everything about you. I still do.”
“You shattered the secrecy of my life as you showed how much you knew about me. Things I thought nobody knew. That scared me as I can’t even describe. Your very existence on Earth, in America, was a dreadful security threat. I had to tell the authorities and yet I also knew what they’d do to you, and I couldn’t. Keeping you secret from my people was the first time I have ever gone against my duty and it wounds me. Every day I wake up and ask myself if I truly know what I’m doing. And every day you convince me that I’m doing the right thing.”
“Even then you weren’t finished. After you destroyed my privacy, you continued opening me up in a way I’d never expected. I didn’t know how lonely I was until you entered my life, or how pathetic. You were so sexy and so vulnerable, and yet with a fire in you that I just adore. You are everything I wish I had been, and I love you for it. You annihilated my old life, and yet it didn’t hurt, it was heaven. Every crack you exposed in my armour you somehow made better.”
“To make things more confusing, you were so like me in some ways that it stunned me, but in others you’re just so much better. Your people too. No wars, no prejudice, no trouble. Until now I had no idea that there were any Leinians who could do wrong. I only wish my people were so good. But we’re not. We’re so far from it that it shames me.”
“I wanted to tell you everything from the start. I still do believe me. But I can’t. I will tell you one thing that you probably should know though. After being in the CIA for many
years, I was seconded again to the DOD, Project Alpha, the most paranoid and immoral agency on Earth.”
“Its mission is to facilitate the most highly secret research done on the planet. To stop other powers doing the same. And sometimes to steal what others have achieved.”
“I hated it every single day. I felt unclean and ashamed of so much of what I did and what I had to cover up. But I still won’t betray it. There’s things I just can’t tell you, either because they’re national secrets, or because I’m so ashamed of them I couldn’t stand you knowing.”
