Date Point 10y4m1d AV
Seawall, Stanley Park, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Earth.
Xiù Chang
Just running was a relief. Moving was a relief, not being surrounded by people asking questions, so many questions… getting away from her fussing mother, from a father who was constantly melancholy when he should have been delighted, from a big little brother she didn’t know how to talk with…
Just the freedom to run, under open sky in correct gravity rather than on a treadmill, when every breath that rushed into and through and out of her was dense and rich and right, almost intoxicating.
For the first time since arriving on Earth, Xiù was home. Apparently home was sweatpants, a cerulean running top, running shoes, asphalt pounding away under her, and chilly sea air smelling of salt water and distant fish. Too early in the morning for there to be anything but trees and benches to her left, and water and mountains to her right, and only the occasional hardcore jogger like herself to break the tranquility.
Earth itself was welcoming her home just fine. Trees and mountains and the smell of the sea hadn’t changed a bit.
It was people who were giving her difficulty. Old school friends who’d visit just long enough for an awkward hug and a gift before vanishing. The reporters poised around her parents’ house had only finally been persuaded to leave by the realisation that Xiù was determined not to make herself pretty for the camera, and was more interested in getting the hell away from them. Employers wanted experience and marketable skills, for which purposes Gung Fu, fluency in an alien language and three years of living as a vagrant in disguise apparently didn’t count.
It was all so complicated. And worse, everyone seemed to be disappointed and upset when she didn’t fit seamlessly back into their lives as if nothing had happened. As if she hadn’t been homeless and alone and had to fight monsters and nearly been killed, and…
As if what happened to her was her fault and she should just deal with it.
The city itself didn’t give a fuck, thankfully. It was comforting to run past the same old landmarks, be just another face on the street. An asian girl on her morning fitness routine, anonymous and glad of it.
She was breathing hard by the time she passed under Lions Gate bridge. Too many years of alien gravity, three weeks of hospital, binging on her mother’s home cooking and the last lingering effects of being spaced had all conspired to badly hurt her fitness compared to the last time she had run this route.
She paused at the Prospect Point lighthouse, mentally calculating how far it was to Siwash Rock which had been her objective for today.
Too far. Much too far, if she was being sensible. She’d be a wreck by the time she reached it, and she’d still have to get back.
“To hell with sensible.“ she muttered, not noticing that she’d said it in Gaori, and kept going. She wanted to be thoroughly exhausted, today, having had the bad news that morning that one of the girls in her ballet class had died less than four months after she, Xiù, had been abducted. A bad cold had turned into chest infection, had become a pneumonia without anybody realising. She’d gone to bed early to try and sleep it off, never to wake. She’d been nineteen.
Missing a couple of weddings and the birth of a little girl named after her had all been body-blows, too. Running and recovering her fitness was keeping her mind off how much she’d missed, at least. It was helping her cope.
There was a spot about two hundred meters further on where the seawall path kinked inwards to hug the bottom of the cliff, and when it did she almost tripped and fell over, because she’d just run into a dream.
Somebody had placed a sculpture out in the water. It hadn’t been there ten years ago – in fact, being burnished steel on a post in salt water, it probably hadn’t been out there for very long at all – but it was right out of the vivid dreams she’d had aboard Sanctuary: a faceless steel man, sitting cross-legged and pondering a globe held delicately in his left hand.
She gaped at it, immobilized by deja vu, and then decided that maybe sensible had its merits. She glanced back at it, half expecting it to suddenly stand and throw the ball to her, and then retraced her steps.
She was still in a badly shaken mood by the time the taxi she had called returned her to her parents’ house in Strathcona. Slightly more shaking still was the man sitting in their front room making polite small-talk over tea with her family.
Xiù would be the first to admit to a nigh-total lack of experience with men. She’d been kept away from them before her abduction, and then during the years of her absence, the male she’d spent the most time with had been Regaari, who probably didn’t count given that he wasn’t even human. Sure, toward the end there had been Julian, Lewis, Amir and… and Zane… but by and large, men were an alien species to her.
But, she’d spent years living among alien species and learning how to read them, and this one, when he looked at her, did something that the Corti normally did – he looked a little too long, he evaluated, he analyzed. She immediately took a disliking to him.
He was kind of easy on the eyes though. Tall, all the best features of both white and african heritage, and either his suit was tailored or he’d got unbelievably lucky at the store, and it didn’t look cheap enough to be store-bought.
Xiù was nearly as out of touch with fashion as she was with men, given that the inspirations for the styles that had inspired the inspirations for the previous generation’s inspirations hadn’t even been three seasons away when she left, but there was something almost… Qinis about the cut of it. She’d seen a gaggle of three of them once, parading down a station concourse, as tall and flimsy and decorative as orchids, and the ornate fascinators they’d been wearing seemed to have inspired elements of the man’s lapels and the subtle patterning around the hem of his jacket.
As slick and expensive as the suit was, the man wearing it had a kind of rough-and-ready, stubbled look, including a peculiar scar – a lattice of slim white lines slightly forward of his left temple.
She addressed her mother in Mandarin. “Who’s this?” she asked. “Another reporter? Please, mom, I don’t want to talk to him.”
Amazingly, he replied perfectly in the same language. “I’m not a reporter, Miss Chang. Nothing to worry about there.”
It took her a second to realise that he’d lacked any kind of an accent at all, which was a trait characteristic of translator devices, and sure enough when she glanced at the table there was a small silver cube there which was almost certainly exactly that.
She spared herself an irritated blush by muttering something about needing a shower, and vanished upstairs.
Once clean, she changed into her loose grey sweatpants and a white ribbed vest top, then lurked in her spartan bedroom in the hope that he’d go away. No such luck – eventually, there was a knock on the door.
Li Chang stuck his head around his daughter’s door. “You may want to talk to this one.” he told her, gently. Xiù sighed.
“Do I have to?” she asked. “I’ve spoken to the intelligence people, the doctors, the news…”
“I don’t think he’s going to be asking the same questions.” her father said. “I say give him a chance.”
She scooted up the bed and sat against the wall, acutely aware that she was behaving like a girl half her age. “Fine, okay…”
A minute or so later, the stranger knocked on the door and entered on her reluctant welcome. He’d taken the jacket off at some point, and Xiù had to admit, she hadn’t anticipated the large tattoo that seemed to completely cover his right arm. To her irritation, he took one look at the bare walls and floor and chuckled.
“Something funny?” she asked him.
“Hey, we seem to have got off on the wrong foot there. I’m sorry about that.” the man said. It had been years since she’d last heard a Texan accent. He cast about for something to sit down on, then gave up and offered her a hand to shake. “Kevin.”
She shook it, deciding that she could be polite at least. “Xiù.”
“Yeah, sorry. I shouldn’t have laughed, but I did the exact same thing when I got back too.”
When Xiù just frowned at him, he waved a hand at the pronounced lack of items that her cleanup had left behind. “This. You spend a few years living out among the stars surrounded by all those critters with nothing but what you’re carrying… Get home, kinda feels like all that stuff ain’t yours no more, doesn’t it?”
“So you’re Kevin Jenkins.” She guessed, finally recognising him and irritated at the too-smooth attempt to identify with her. “I thought I recognised you from somewhere. The Gaoians showed me that news report you were in: You’re the reason it took me this long to get back. You’re the reason I had to spend all that time in disguise, and running.”
“Aww come on, be fair.” he complained. “It’s not like I ordered the Guvnurag to put that forcefield up there! And I sure as hell didn’t order the Dominion to start throwing folks to the wolves.”
“You ran your mouth off.”
He exhaled, and lowered himself onto the floor. “Maybe I did.” he agreed. “I never thought it’d… Didn’t you ever say something out there that maybe scared somebody, or they took it the wrong way?”
Xiù didn’t answer. “What do you want?” she asked instead.
“Jeez, lady, why the third degree?”
“Really? You can’t see how it’s maybe a bit frustrating how people in suits keep showing up who want to talk to me and ask me questions? And the question is never ‘what can I do for you, Miss Chang?’ or ‘Yes, about your resume, we have need of a Gaoian language expert for this movie we’re making, are you interested in auditioning?’ No. Every time, every time, it’s something people want me to do for them!”
Jenkins just watched her, warily. He was doing that Corti analysis thing again, so Xiù scooted forward on the bed, planted her feet on the floor and gave him her best glare. “So go on then. What. Do. You. Want?”
He considered his answer carefully, licking his teeth as he looked around the room.
“Full disclosure.” he said, at last. “First of all, you’ve gotta know from the news thingy that I’m an old friend of Kirk’s and… yeah, I guess I’d sure like to hear news about him. That’s my personal reason for coming here. Professionally…”
“I knew it.”
“Professionally,” Jenkins forged ahead. “We have need, yes, of a Gaoian language expert. And an extraterrestrial survival expert, somebody who can live on a ship without much in the way of possessions-” he swept a hand demonstratively around the room “-basically, somebody with your skill set.”
Xiù glowered at him. “A spaceship?” she asked. “You’re offering me a job on a spaceship?”
“Yeah.”
“Why would I want to leave?” She asked. “I only just got back!”
Jenkins gave her another calculating stare, then stood up.
”…I know those scars on your arm.” he said, causing her to glance unconsciously at them. “A Hunter gave you those, I’ve seen their teeth right up close and personal. And that on your neck is where some fella had a knife to your throat. Up against a wall, if I’m any judge. Seen that plenty of times too. Scary place, this galaxy of ours. Ain’t it?”
“Get out.”
“You look at people like the Corti do too, you know.”
A sick, cold ball of anger dropped right into Xiù’s stomach. “…What?”
“When you walked in, first thing you did was… evaluate me. Calculate. And I saw you see me do the same to you, and I saw you didn’t like it. And I get why. Don’t much care for those little gray assholes myself, not after they bolted a prototype implant to my head like something out of the Terminator. I’m sorry, it’s nothing personal. Just a survival habit both you and me picked up out there.”
When Xiù didn’t say anything, he apparently took it for permission to keep talking. “And then you come back here and it’s not like you imagined, is it?” he asked, rhetorically. “You imagined it’d all be your old bed and your ma’s cooking and then it turns out: things have moved on. The world’s changed. And home turns out to be a place in your head, that you can’t ever go back to, because those gray motherfuckers took it from you and you won’t ever get it back. Believe me, I tried.”
Oblivious or uncaring of her mounting rage, he pressed the point. “I thought Earth was home too. but you and me? We were out there too long and it changed us. And guess what?! You weren’t here for their lives either! My daughter grew up, and so did your little brother. We both missed weddings, one of your friends died while you were gone…”
Xiù erupted to her feet and punched him full in the nose, breaking it. He staggered against the wall and clamped a hand over the sudden blood flow. He was too preoccupied with pain and surprise to say anything but he still managed to stare a wide-eyed question at her.
“I don’t know who you think you are, and I don’t care.” she snarled at him. “You don’t know me, you don’t know what I went through, don’t try to… to project your baggage onto me and don’t you dare, don’t you DARE try to use me like that, you… you creep!”
He shouldered himself off the wall. “Y’don’t think mebbe that was a bit of an overreaction?” he mumbled through his hand, feigning bravado.
“Who told you you could come into my house and treat me like a prize?!” Xiù prodded his chest. ”Nobody gets to do that! Not you, not anybody.”
“An’ here I was thinkin’ we were makin’ a connection.” Jenkins muttered as he adjusted his grip, wincing as he pinched his nostrils shut.
“You came to my house.” Xiù repeated. “You tricked my parents. You tried to manipulate me, you tried to get inside my head. You tried to use these-” she gestured at the ragged scar lines on her arm, and to the tiny cut on her throat “-to make me do what you want? My answer is NO. You go away right now!”
Jenkins nodded and opened the door. “Offer of a job still stands.” he croaked.
“Then get somebody who can treat me like a human being rather than an objective to put it in writing!” Xiù snapped. “Get. Out.”
She slammed the door behind him, catching him in the backside and congratulating herself as she heard him barely avoid falling down the stairs.
Then she sank onto the bed. She was shaking and crying when her parents rushed in seconds later.
Kevin Jenkins
Staggering across the road while holding his nose together nearly earned Kevin a car to the knee. He raised an apologetic hand to the driver – the other one being clamped around his bleeding nose adequately made the case that he was slightly preoccupied right now – and made it to his own car, fumbled with the door sensor and thumped down onto the driver seat.
He sat there pinching his nostrils and swearing for a good ten minutes before he was finally satisfied that the bleeding had ceased.
He pulled down the sun visor and peered into its makeup mirror. The nose wasn’t crooked at least, but it was bruised, there were dark splotches under his eyes for good measure, and his shirt was in dire need of a dry-cleaner’s attention. He touched the nose experimentally, and flinched.
“Way to go, dumbass.” he congratulated himself. “Fuckin’ perfect.”
Date Point 10y4m1d AV
Mrwrki Station, Uncharted System, Deep Space
Kirk
Kirk had once seen a human documentary in which a team of fishermen had sat and patiently repaired their nets after a successful trawl. At the time, he hadn’t fully appreciated that, while repairing the net was still massively less of a task than weaving a new one, it must still be tedious and time-consuming. After all, only deathworlders would consider it normal for an animal to damage a net of woven plastic fibers. Doubly so when the animal in question did so without claws, teeth or a knife, but simply with its own mass and strength.
To the fisherman, a routine part of the day. To Kirk… more than that.
Mending his own net – the galactic web of contacts, favours called in, bribes issued and reputations blackmailed that had kept him fed with information from across Dominion space was…tedious, yes. time-consuming, yes. Fiddly, delicate and at times frustrating yes. And it was hampered all the more that he had to do it now at arms’ lengths, and through proxies and agents, none of whom could be allowed to know who he was. The galaxy had not heard from Krrkktnkk A’ktnnzzik’tk in a long time, and his sudden reappearance could not possibly pass without comment. The more he achieved before those comments began, the better.
His time away had changed some of the players, too. Politicians had retired, criminal figures had been arrested, killed or had wisely resigned into obscurity before either of those fates caught them. The only solution was to rebuild, slowly. And while that was a task that by and large was proceeding at a satisfactory pace, it did often leave him seated by his desk, trying to be entertained while waiting for a message to arrive.
Right now, he was listening to an audiobook.
”…unintended effects are always possible. For instance, the most dangerous road on Earth now appears to be a two-lane highway between Kabul and Jalalabad. When it was unpaved, cratered, and strewn with boulders it was comparatively safe. But once some helpful Western contractors improved it, the driving skills of the local Afghans were finally liberated from the laws of physics. Many now have a habit of passing slow-moving trucks on blind curves, only to find themselves suddenly granted a lethally unimpeded view of a thousand-foot gorge. Are there lessons to be learned from such missteps in the name of progress? Of course. But they do not negate the reality of progress.”
He paused the book and mulled that thought over, only to be interrupted by Vedreg.
If Lewis was a study in how humans could absorb massive volumes of information and correlate them in breathtaking ways, and if Kirk was a living justification for his species’ reputation for shrewdness and politics, Vedreg was…
Well, he had become very interested in baking.
At first Kirk had been uncharitably scornful of this, but Vedreg had proven once again that he wasn’t actually stupid, just… slow.
In English, Kirk knew, the two terms were used more or less as synonyms, but in the case of Guvnurag, the difference became apparent. Both in matters of the body and matters of the mind, nobody, not even the most inventively charitable liar, could have realistically described Guvnurag as “fast”…but they did have inertia, which could be the next best thing. It had certainly allowed them to outperform the Corti when it came to large forcefield technology and a few associated technological fields.
The Corti preferred for their research to yield dazzling new inspirations that could make the researcher’s reputation and earn them a promotion. Hard graft wasn’t their style at all, and so in areas where the patient ability to keep chewing away at the details yielded incremental, cumulative improvements, they were surprisingly lacking. Guvnurag were all about hard graft. They didn’t have much of an alternative.
And so, while Lewis and Kirk had been blitzing around the station familiarizing themselves with its layout, its capabilities and its systems, reinforcing some repairs and, in Lewis’ case, a thorough search for terrifying killing machines… Vedreg had parked himself in an unobtrusive spot and had thought.
He had then, after some trial and error, some research, the assembly of a few appropriate tools, and raiding the station’s food storage stasis lockers, baked an apple pie.
It wasn’t actually an apple pie of course. The nearest apple was tens of thousands of lightyears away, as was the nearest flour, not to mention the butter and eggs which neither Kirk nor Vedreg could have eaten anyway. And the less said about cinnamon, the better.
But, desiccating and then milling down some universal ration spheres had produced a dry edible powder, and fructose was fructose all over the galaxy, present in the cuisine of every species (though not, it had to be said, in the quantities called for by most human recipes: Earth’s deathworld conditions had caused plants to evolve that could generate sugar in terrifying quantities that had never been available to nonhuman chefs)
The real key to the dish, however, was a type of fruit called a “Rhwk”, the flesh of which was tart, sweet and not dissimilar to an apple in texture and culinary properties. Rhwk had long been a firm favourite of Kwmbwrw gastronomes, but Vedreg’s genius had been to recognise that the slimy fluid core of the fruit and the oily substance that protected its seed were acceptable matches for egg and butter respectively.
The result was… a failure. An abject one. What the oven eventually belched out had turned out to be a monstrosity of black caramelized fruit sugars and a “pastry” substitute that fell apart at a suspicious glance.
The second attempt had been marginally more successful. The third, practically intact.
The fourth had been a pie. Not, according to Lewis, an apple pie – the taste apparently had more in common with something called “grapefruit” – but still very pleasing to the palate.
Once the basic principle of the pastry was down, Vedreg had thrown himself into his baking with gusto. Lewis had complained about the enforced vegan diet at one point, but the nauseated signals he’d received from both of the obligate herbivores on the crew had induced him to drop the subject.
In any case, Vedreg’s offerings had grown commendably in complexity and skill, and he made BIG portions, the smallest of which wound up on Kirk’s plate. It was slightly disconcerting to see that Lewis ate slightly more than Vedreg, despite being roughly a tenth of Vedreg’s mass.
He also tended to the running of the place. Thanks to Vedreg, the station was clean, the lighting was powered, mealtimes were scheduled. By taking over in keeping Lewis fit and healthy, he had created time for Kirk to complete his objectives, and during the two days every week that Vedreg spent hibernating, the place noticeably went downhill. Despite all that, it hadn’t clicked for Kirk what it was that his friend was doing until the day Lewis had referred to him affectionately as “Jeeves”.
Vedreg, of course, had needed the reference explained. Hence why he was now pulsing purple-blue in amused confusion while watching “A Bit of Fry and Laurie.”
Lewis meanwhile was enjoying his weekly break from study to watch it alongside him. He had climbed – carefully – onto Vedreg’s wide back and was grinning at the comedy.
“I do not understand” Vedreg said. “His name is to drop a small object? It is… absurd.”
“That’s the point, dude, yeah. It’s surreal.”
“This word ’sur-u-ree-lu’ does not translate.”
“Aww, man, we’re getting pretty abstract here. Surreal is like… when things are like, reality but wrong in some way. Bizarre.”
“I do not understand.” Vedreg repeated.
“Humor never translates.” Kirk told them both. “Ever.”
“Oh please, that’s bullshit. We’re all sapient, we’re all similar.”
“Our friend Krrkktnkk A’ktnnzzik’tk is correct, Lewis.” Vedreg rumbled. “I do not understand human humor, and you will not understand the humor of the Guvnuragnaguvendrugun.”
“Alright, bring it. Hit me with your best joke, Jeeves.” Lewis challenged him. He sat up and – carefully, so as not to injure – slid down off Vedreg’s back.
“Very well… hmm…“ Vedreg rumbled a Guvnurag throat-clear. “Tiny Geverednig goes to her herd-father and declares: ’largest one! I am thirsty!’ – The herd-father points to the mountain.”
Kirk and Lewis exchanged mutual bewildered expressions as Vedreg glowed royal purple and produced a wheezing sound deep in his chest – his species’ version of uproarious laughter.
Slowly, he faded. “Do… do you not see? Largest one? The mountain?”
”…My turn.” Lewis said. “Uh… Three men walk into a bar. You’d think one of them would have seen it!”
He smiled hopefully as it was Vedreg and Kirk’s turn to express confusion. “I guess… puns probably don’t work so well. Okay how about an anti-joke?”
“Anti-joke?” Vedreg asked.
“Okay, so… ’What’s so funny about a shuttle full of Corti exploding?’“
Vedreg flashed alarmed white. “…I can see nothing amusing in that scenario! It would be a tragic loss of sapient life.”
Lewis sagged. “Uh… yes. Exactly. That’s the punchline.”
“I am confused.” Vedreg told him.
“Okay, okay, I know. How about-?”
“My turn.” Kirk interrupted. “And this should prove my point.”
Lewis sighed. “Fiiiine.”
Kirk nodded at length. “Somewhere deep in space, a freighter picks up a distress beacon.” he began. “They rescue the escape pod and are pleased to find that the occupant is a fellow Rrrrtktktkp’ch. They explain that, sadly, their freighter is a slow one and that it will be many rikat before they next arrive at port, but the castaway is simply grateful for the rescue.”
“At mealtime, the four of them sit down to enjoy Cqcq and Zrrk, in welcome to their new guest. Just as they have begun to eat, the captain says: ‘Twelve.’ his two crewmates laugh, and one replies ‘Eight.’ to further merriment. Naturally, this confuses the newcomer, who requests an explanation.”
“‘We have worked together for hundreds of rik’, the captain explains. ’We all know each others’ jokes by now, and so it is more efficient to refer to them by number.’ The newcomer nods his understanding and falls silent.”
“Shortly thereafter, he looks around and ventures: ‘Fifteen?’. There is no response. ‘Nine?’ – Still nothing. Exasperated, he asks what he is doing wrong.”
“The junior deckhand shakes his mane sadly and informs him: ‘Your delivery is terrible.’“
Vedreg promptly signalled blue confusion, but Lewis’ lips drew back into an imposing Deathworlder smile and he made a kind of wheezing noise that it took Kirk seconds to identify as a laugh. “Oh man… Oh… yeah. Yeah okay. That’s a good’n.”
“It seems I was wrong.” Kirk observed, deeply surprised. “You understood?”
“Heh, yeah. Your own delivery was pretty good.”
“What does delivery have to do with-?” Vedreg began, then sagged when Lewis and Kirk both turned to look at him. “…The herd is following a truly ancient father when four Mumruvnede fly overhead. The oldest child cries: ‘Face the wind!’?” He ventured, hopefully.
”…Was that a fart joke?” Lewis asked. “That was a fart joke!”
”…as a matter of fact it was.” Vedreg agreed, turning a slightly embarrassed shade of magenta.
“See! there IS universal humour!” Lewis turned and grinned triumphantly.
Kirk held up all four hands in defeat, and then handed him a tablet. “And while we were joking around…” he said “…contact has been made with Earth.”
Lewis grabbed it. “Yeah? What’d they say?”
“Nothing yet. This is all information on how to establish a secure line of communication. I imagine that we will hear more in due course but for now… it’s a start.”
Lewis sighed. “Frustrating.” he declared.
“But vital.”
“I know, I know…” Lewis stood up. “Arright, in that case I’ma call it a night. See you tomorrow.”
They bade him goodnight, and Vedreg pulsed through a thoughtful rainbow of blues and oranges. “Did he seem… upset by that, to you?” He asked.
“He is lonely.” Kirk replied. “Humans are intensely social creatures, old friend.”
“I feel the call of my home planet also.” Vedreg replied. “It is… stressful to be so far from my herd.”
“The difference, old friend, is that herd species feel comforted by each others’ presence, but do not care for one another in quite the same way that humans do.” Kirk replied. “He is suffering… it makes me feel guilty.”
“You have confined us all.” Vedreg agreed. “Even if for good reasons.”
Kirk shook his coat out a little. “I have total confidence in Lewis.” he said. “He will find a solution, and we will be able to send him home.”
“An alternative approach suggests itself, Krrkktnkk A’ktnnzzik’tk.”
“And that is?”
Vedreg shone a brilliant cyan, as if the answer was obvious. “Bring more humans here.”
Date Point 10y4m1d AV
North Clearwater County, Minnesota, USA, Earth
Julian Etsicitty
“So what’s the place look like?”
Allison was on a train in the UK – Julian could see green fields and more black-and-white cows than a sane nation should allow rushing past the back of her head, interrupted by occasional white cottages, trees and brick railside buildings.
Julian shrugged and aimed his own phone around the room. It was essentially unchanged from the last time he’d stood in it, except…colder, and lifeless. Without the gentle sounds of a house being lived in, rather than being comfortably cluttered, it felt more like a museum locked up at night.
“It held up okay considering it’s gone without maintenance for a couple years…” He conceded. “But it’s not the same without Grampa.”
“He had a lot of stuff!” Allison commented, bringing her phone closer to her face.
This was an understatement for the ages. Grampa E had been Navajo, Julian’s grandma had been equal parts Ojibwe and French, both of them had identified as American first and foremost, and neither of them had been afraid to collect keepsakes throughout their long and fascinating lives.
The result was that the rich green walls were almost totally obscured by photos, artwork and decorations, no two items of which matched. Three huge glass-fronted cabinets were stuffed full of whatever ornaments couldn’t hang on the walls, and that was without accounting for the iron pans hung on the walls by the fridge, the herb-drying rack above the kitchen island, the commemorative plates above the door, the cookie jar, three recliners, a futon, a coffee table with a humidor full of premium cigars tucked under it, and a TV as big as a ping-pong table. To this last was attached a venerable Sega Genesis – Julian’s favourite childhood plaything and already quite obsolete by the time he’d first picked up its controllers.
And that was just the big front room. The two bedrooms were equally cluttered, even the bathroom hadn’t escaped becoming a repository for decorative knick-knacks, and the utility room leading out to the back door was home to a drift of koozies, a stack of tackle boxes, and a gun locker layered in stickers and whatever magnets hadn’t been able to find a home either on the fridge in the kitchen or the freezers in the garage.
The less said about the unlimited salvage opportunities presented by the recesses of said garage, the better.
“Yup.” Julian agreed.
“What are you gonna do with it?”
“Shit, Al. Don’t ask me right now, I’m still…I still expect the old man to come shuffling out of the garage, you know?”
She moved the phone away from her face. ”…I’m sorry, baby. He meant a lot to you, huh?”
“He raised me.” Julian shrugged. “I don’t even know. I love this place but it’s kind of the ass-end of nowhere. The land’s not worth much, and if we do go back out into space again then I’m not going to be here enough to look after it properly. There’s a pickup out there that I can probably resurrect, and two more that I probably can’t…”
“You’ve gotta start somewhere, though?” She asked.
“I already did. Cleared out all the spoiled food from the freezers, lit some scented candles…place doesn’t stink of three-year-old fish any more at least.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah.”
“So what’s next?”
“Got a message this morning that my dead letter’s waiting for me.” Julian said. “Figured I’d go pick that up, grab some essentials from the store, maybe have a campfire and s’mores.”
“Aww man, s’mores? You’re having s’mores without me?” Allison pouted, then giggled. She glanced behind her and realised that the pastoral landscape outside was now unambiguously urban. “Aaand I think this is Birmingham. I’d better get ready.”
“Good luck, Al. I miss you.”
“Miss you too, Etsicitty.” she wrinkled her nose at him affectionately. “You behave yourself ‘til I get back, hear?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“SO hot.” She blew a kiss and ended the call.
There was nothing quite like having a gorgeous woman describe him as “hot” to boost Julian’s ego. Grinning, he grabbed his jacket and keys and headed out to where his rented truck was parked outside. That was one thing to say for the old place – you could have parked a couple of eighteen-wheelers outside with room left over to land a helicopter. An SUV, three pickups and a by-now thoroughly immobile ancient tractor weren’t taking up even half the available parking space.
He entertained himself for about half the long drive to town by perusing the local radio offerings before deciding that, time zones or not, Vancouver was probably fully awake right now.
He called Xiù.
There was a smile in her voice when she answered. “Hey!”
“Hey you.” he smiled too. “Just checking in. You okay?”
“Eh…my day started off pretty crappy.” she conceded. “But…yes, I’m okay now. You?”
“Pretty good. Place is in better shape than I thought. I just need to pack it up and sort a few things out then…well, I’ll have plenty of time to decide what I’m doing with it. What was crappy?”
“Nothing I want to talk about, just…” she sighed ”…people.”
Julian chuckled. “I hear ya.” he agreed. “When’re you going to come down and look at this place?”
“The ARP haven’t come through yet, so I don’t exactly have a lot of money…” she demurred. “Please tell me you’re planning to come back up here though…”
He couldn’t contain a quiet, affectionate half-laugh. “Yes, Xiù, we’re coming back up there.” he reassured, teasing her with a patient tone. He heard a slight laugh from her end of the phone. “Like I said, once I’m done packing the place up we’ll have plenty of time to think.”
“Good. I-I, um…”
“What?”
”…I think I really need you. Both of you, Allison and you.”
Julian ran a tongue across his lips, trying to think of what to say. “That bad?” he asked.
“I’m…yeah.”
“Okay…look, it’s going to be a little while yet. There’s a lot to do. So I tell you what, if you need to? You just come down here. You know where I live – I’ll pay for it.”
Xiù paused long enough for Julian to come to a halt at a stop sign, where he exchanged slight nods of mutual recognition with a lurking state trooper before turning right and heading for Clearbrook.
“Julian…are you sure?” she asked at last.
“Hey.” he told her, warmly, deciding not to mention that his and Allison’s hazard pay plus their accumulated salary from serving on Sanctuary meant that Xiù’s travel expenses wouldn’t even noticeably dent his savings. “Don’t worry about it. If you need to come down here, you do it. Okay? I’ll take care of you. Of it.”
There was no reply.
”…Xiù?”
“Mi, yi sher-yan ina mo.”
Julian frowned. “Was that Gaoian?”
“Uh…yeah. Sorry. Th-thank you, Julian.”
“For you, anything.” he promised.
She made some kind of a noise, one he couldn’t quite discern the meaning of. It might have been a sigh, might have been a laugh, might have been the disintegrating beginning of a weak “um…”: it wasn’t at all clear.
“I’d…better help my mom cook.” she declared. “It’s good to, uh, to spend time with her.”
“Sure. Have fun, you.”
“And you…”
She was silent for a long few seconds before she finally hung up.
Aside from drumming his fingers thoughtfully on the wheel, Julian drove the rest of the way into town cloaked in contemplative silence and no small amount of guilt. Two things were becoming increasingly apparent: that Xiù was harbouring a large and growing crush on him…and that the feeling was mutual.
Considering his committed relationship with Allison, that part was hard to feel good about, and he’d have much preferred to raise it with Allison before now, if only there had been an opportunity. but in the hospital hadn’t seemed right, and over the phone while she was abroad? Even worse.
He checked the dashboard clock and performed a few mental calculations. He had about four days to go before Allison got back from the UK. He made his plan: After she got back from England, they’d go back to Grampa E’s place, he’d make her s’mores, they’d cuddle by the fire…and he’d confess. See how it went.
It sounded so simple, put that way. Like there was no big deal involved.
“Sure, Etsicitty.” he muttered. “No big deal at all.”
Clearbrook post office was pretty much unchanged from the last time he’d seen it. Same red brick construction, same flat roof, same flagpole and the words “United States Post Office” in steel letters on the corner of the building. The road had been resurfaced and given a fresh set of bright yellow lines and the trees were all a bit taller, but otherwise…
He parked up, headed indoors, and found it thankfully empty. The postal worker was a rotund middle-aged woman with candy-red dyed hair in a tight ponytail and enormous spectacles, who gave him a welcoming smile. Her name tag identified her as ‘Caroline’
“Hi! What can I do for you?” she asked.
“Hi, uh…Julian Etsicitty, I’m here for my dead letter?”
She froze. “Oh…Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.”
“Why, what happened?”
“Well nothing happened, I mean, it’s all here…all of it…” She recovered herself and produced a form for him to sign – ten years and change into the extraterrestrial contact age and the United States Postal Service still hadn’t weaned itself off hardcopy paperwork – checked his ID then vanished to stamp and file the form. “Head on out front, I’ll bring it round.”
“You’ll bring it rou-?” Julian frowned at her as she vanished through a door, then did as she said, heading back out into the parking lot.
After a minute of confused waiting, he became aware of a sort of…rumbling sound.
This turned out to be Caroline, dragging behind her a pallet jack, onto which was loaded a crate full of more USPS totes than Julian would have considered plausible.
“That’s…that’s my mail?” he asked, flatly.
“This is your mail.” Caroline agreed.
“All of that?”
“All of it. Yyyup.”
Sarcasm, or some kind of witty remark, was the order of the day. This whole situation was crying out for Julian to keep a cool head and deliver some kind of suave joke. He ran a hand through his hair and tried his best to compose one.
“Uh… Wow.”