“Rules are for those still working by the rules,” murmured a voice like a waterfall. Bill turned, wishing, hoping this was all a dehydrated dream where he’d wake up late at night, beside his broken down jalopy, stuck in a rut high on some New Mexico mountain road that lacked people but still echoed to the sound of normal things. Like birds, insects, pine squirrels and the wind. He looked up.
She.
He saw no breasts. Nothing mammalian at all about this woman. But very feminine. Very earth-motherish. Not pinched like Linda. Open. Expansive. Considering. Her eyes were the best part. The normal part.
Two sandy brown eyes watched him from a thin elfin face, looking down from an impossibly tall, slender frame that was humanoid—as much as he could tell under the camouflaging jeans and cotton work shirt. The clothes had been adapted from some ranchwoman’s work clothes, but two feet of raw cloth had been added on. Folded hands lay clasped where a waist should be. And probably was. The tea spilled noisily as his hand jerked back, clutching, seeking something normal. Regular. Humanlike. Anything but this… this…
“Oh, goddd…”
“Which one?” asked the alien woman, a beautiful smile filling her face, much like a Seurat pointillist painting will suggest a shape without the use of straight lines.
“Uh…”
Jack coughed irritatedly. “Captain Siane, you know the rules of the Refuge. Why the hell are you scaring the shit out of this poor outsider?”
Siane turned her gaze from Bill. He slumped in the chair, heart thumping wildly. Her gaze on him had been like a mongoose eyeing a snake. Had he been prey? Or just a curiosity? “Uncle Jack, your rules are extreme. The townspeople don’t mind us.”
Us? He turned back to Jack as Captain Siane regally rounded the table and leaned back against the kitchen counter, where she could watch them both. Jack pulled out a pen knife and started trimming his nails, not looking at her. “Rules are obeyed by polite people. Even if they disagree with them.”
He swung his head back and forth between the two of them, unable to believe the inanity of their conversation. Aliens were here, on Earth! Major news. Major photos. Big money. Money enough for him and Davy to—
Siane looked his way sharply. “Bill? You’re the Bill who talked to Emma, aren’t you?”
He gulped. “Jack. Uncle Jack. Does she read minds?”
Jack and Siane both laughed hilariously, clutching their stomachs. He simmered. “Hey. There’s no phone lines to this place. It was a serious question.”
Jack shook his head, bemused now that Siane wasn’t arguing with him. “CB,” he said.
“Ceebee?”
The hand with the pen knife jerked one thumb back to the white porcelain kitchen sink. Beside it sat a squarish lump of plastic and metal that blinked a few lights and sported a whip antenna. The kind you see on rural pickups. Oh. He understood now. Citizens band radio. Out here, in the rural West, CBs went with pickups and gun racks in the back window the same way a BLT sandwich always had three ingredients. Pickup, gun, and CB. All the locals had them.
“Emma called you?” he asked as Siane watched them both intently.
“Of course. As did Hank at the gas station. We’re not country bumpkins around here, you know.”
He didn’t know. And he’d made some stupid assumptions. He shook his head, cycling back to two things not made in Detroit or Tokyo. “Her. Cockroach man. Where the hell are they from, and why haven’t they… haven’t they…” Siane seemed amused by his stumbling over the hackneyed words usually contained in five buck sci fi thrillers.
“Why haven’t we done The Day The Earth Stood Still number?” she asked.
He nodded, numb. “You watch TV reruns too?”
Siane assumed a very serious manner; almost a command manner, much like that belonging to a general commanding an armored division who worried about the people inside his expensive hardware. “Only when I’m bored. But in space, nothing is ever lost. Even old films.” She smiled quirkily. “Sorry. No residuals for retired screen writers. It’s a bit hard to tax empty vacuum.”
Warmth flushed his face. Dimly, he realized he was about to faint. He’d been hyperventilating. Cold liquid splashed his face. Jack put down his empty tea glass, eyes angry as he turned on his boarder.
“Siane! Leave him alone. And don’t play mysterious with him. He deserves politeness just like anyone else around here.”
She fixed hard, hard eyes on Uncle Jack. “So? No one asked him to come up here. No one asked him to invade Captain Twixell’s afternoon constitutional. And no one invited him to feel lustful emotions about Emma. I like her and Janie. They don’t need jerks like this guy bothering them.”
He? A jerk? But how had she known? Jack slammed a fist on the table, really angry with Siane. “Captain! Now he’s all worried again.” Siane simmered, not giving ground. Jack turned to him, handing over a towel for his face. He wiped. Jack reined in his temper and talked reasonably. Normally. “Bill, she isn’t a telepath. But she is a nosy bitch who can never refrain from taking an empath reading on anyone who comes visiting.” Empath? His confusion showed. Jack growled, eyeing Siane again. “See? Bill, she just picks up on emotions. That’s all. Some humans are like that too. So rest easy.”
Rest easy? Hysteria died before cold anger. “Bullshit. You’ve got two kinds of aliens here. Maybe a third. I saw something sheetlike when I drove in.” Jack buried his face in his hands, melodramatically sorrowful. It was an act. He could see that now. “Truth. Time for truth now. Who put up that sign? And why the hell is she here?” His gesture seemed to insult Siane, who stared at him intently, a harpy looming in the corner of his eye.
Uncle Jack sat back, suddenly calm, all the country rube act now vanished from his leathery brown face. “Truth? You think you can handle the truth?”
“Yes.”
Jack glanced to Siane. She looked surprised, but nodded absently, still watching him. Maybe seeing more than a jerk. Jack shrugged, then leaned forward with elbows on the table, all business. “OK. Maybe you can. The highway sign tells the honest to god truth. But it shouldn’t have been worded that way. I guess Captain Gecko likes practical jokes.”
“Gecko? A joker?”
“The yellow sheet you saw flitting among the trees. That’s how he moves. Sailing the wind like he used to sail the long depths between the stars.” Jack paused, gaze going distant, not focused on him anymore, or on the wallpaper or the fridge or anything earthbound. “This is the Refuge. It’s been here since long before the Hopis, Zunis, Keresan and others moved up from northern Mexico to settle this country. About two thousand years ago. Something like this place has been here that long. Maybe an adobe mud building. Maybe a stone building. Since the Pueblo Revolt and the arrival of iron tools, saws, nails and basic technology, they’ve allowed real buildings.” Jack glanced aside at watchful Siane; her luminous brown eyes seemed indrawn too, remembering. “Bill, you ever been to Florida?”
“Once.”
“What’s the average age of people down there?”
“Old. Lots of—”
“Retired folks. Right. Same here. Same reason.” Jack laughed musingly, eyes still somewhere else. “Pensions buy more on Earth. And this is a good place for an old age retirement home.”
“For whom?” he croaked out, disbelieving.
Jack focused back on him. “For retired starship captains. Who else? Though with the AIs running the ships and offloading the cargos, they really don’t have much to captain. Just themselves, a few crew, the gardens. They have lots of time on their hands. No hyperdrive where they come from, just standard old sublight starships. Nothing fancy, gets you from here to there.” Jack looked up at Siane, sadness showing. “Takes a few centuries though.” Siane looked away from them both. Wetness showed around her eyes.