“Wait. I thought the word for your reproductive process was ‘sex’.”
“Uh, yeah. Well it is. Sex and love making are the same thing.”
Her eyebrows did that furrowing thing it did when she was confused. “Your means of creating progeny is the same as your way of bonding with friends?”
“Yes.”
“That does not seem correct.”
I shrugged. “It is what it is.”
“No wonder you humans are so volatile. I can’t imagine the kind of chemical soup caused by affection being mixed with the primitive need to survive that is in all of us.”
“You’re saying your people don’t make love or reproduce?”
“Of course, we do, but they’re completely separate acts. Giving birth, as you call it, requires finding and digesting massive amounts of energy. Making love is two of us devolving into our most basic form then merging together into one entity for a short while. Some say it is the most… intimate of connection possible.”
“Some say? So you haven’t done it yourself?”
“No. And have you?”
“Yes,” I answered after a brief pause. I figured I might as well be honest. “A while ago, when I was younger. She was my first girlfriend.”
“Girlfriend. This is a word for partner?”
“Yes.”
“I see. And you cared for this woman very much?”
“Yes. I did.”
“And what happened?”
Geeze, I did not predict that this conversation was going to be headed down bitter nostalgia lane. “Oh you know, it was pretty stereotypical. She was ambitious and went to a great college to study marine extinction, and I went to a vocational colony school for facilities work. We tried to make it work, but eventually we just had to… let go.”
“And this is something humans do? Let go of each other over great distances?”
“Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Honestly, the physical distance doesn’t matter nearly as much as the distance between futures. She outgrew me, plain and simple. Her star was shining brightly, and my star… well it was burnt out before I was born.”
She was frowning now. “I see.” Without another word, she turned back to the desk, data-log in hand. I didn’t know what she meant by that, but I didn’t want to ask. In fact, I needed a bit of time to myself to deal with the unpleasant feelings I thought I had long since locked down.
“Hey, I’ll be back in a bit. You be good, alright?”
“Absolutely. I haven’t yet learned how to be bad.”
I smiled wanly then let myself out.
The ship was oddly quiet as I spent a couple of hours just walking around. Although the peace was nice, it didn’t set well with me. I couldn’t help but feel like something was off.
After the unsettling sensation didn’t abate, I shrugged and headed back to my room. I was sure that Mimi would have come up with some new brilliant plan to use the scanner and was looking forward to it—even if I would only understand about half the words she said. In less than a week, her grasp on the English language far exceeded mine.
But, as I climbed up a ladder onto my floor, I noticed my door was already wide open.
“No!” I cried, rushing forward.
Heart in my throat, I saw that my room had been ransacked, my scrap bin dumped over and everything upturned. Now that I was closer, I could see that blaster fire marked the wall.
No! No, no, no! How had they found her?!
I bolted to the elevator, sliding my card in the reader, but it flashed red.
“Higgens!”
My comm crackled to life and for the first time I was absolutely livid.
“What?!” I snapped.
“Oh, so the gutter-worm grew a spine finally.” Frances’ voice was even more condescending than usual, and it made we want to dropkick him and all his descendants. “You’ve been acting so dodgy lately that I thought a visit down to your quarters was necessary. Imagine how perplexed we were to find you in your room when your comm and card-reader were clearly two floors lower?”
“What did you do to her?”
“Oh, a her, is it?” He laughed and the sound set my teeth on edge. “I have to admit, Higgens, I didn’t know you had it in you. Who’da thought that out of all the people in the universe, it was you who would make first contact. What a disappointment, right?”
I slammed my fist against the elevator, taking my rage out on the door that was barring me from helping my friend.
“Let her go! We destroyed her home. She just wants to get back to her people.”
“I don’t care if she wants to be a freaking unicorn. Do you have any idea the type of credits we will get? What kind of advancement we’ll have as a species with this kind of morphing technology? I could retire tomorrow!”
“Don’t do this! She’s a sentient being, not some shiny rock you can buy and sell like a diamond.”
“Please. She makes diamonds look like chump change. Don’t worry, Higgens. I’m not a cruel man. You’re not in danger, you’re just confined to your floor. I’ll make sure you get a bit of a finder’s fee. I’m just generous like that.”
My comm clicked off and I let out the longest stream of curses I had ever uttered. How could this have happened? I had been so careful!
I sank to the ground, head in my hands. This was the one thing I had ever had to do that mattered, and I had messed it up. I was the exact failure I had always known I was. That everyone always said I was.
I was nothing.
“No.” I growled.
This wasn’t going to be it. I wasn’t going to just leave Mimi in the clutches of a jerk who didn’t even see her as a living being. I was going to rescue her and get her off this ship if it was the last thing I did.
Newly strengthened, I ran back to my room. I gathered all the supplies I needed and strapped them to my body. Once I was sure I had everything, I went back to the same ladder I had shimmied up just moments before.
If I remembered correctly, there was a vent that had been welded shut just after I came on board. With the right solvent, I could get right through the blocked off entrance and make my way to the upper levels.
But first, I had to make sure they couldn’t find me. For the first time since I had arrived, I set my card and my comm on my desk.
Frances wanted to dance? Well I could dance. And I always stepped on toes when I did.
7
Imitation is the Finest Form of Flattery
I thought I had known fear when those whirling teeth had bitten into my home. But that terror was nothing compared to the body-paralyzing fear I felt now.
They had me in some sort of hermetically sealed room, without a crack or single pore I could shift and force myself through. They were going to take me to their home, just as I had feared ever since I learned the truth of my situation.
I had read much in my studies, and too often the cruelty of man was proven again and again. They killed each other with abandon, from hacking off limbs, to burning at the stake, to suffocation with noxious gasses. If they had such disregard for each other, how could they ever care for one such as I?
Life was so different in this form. So, complicated and layered. Things that had never mattered before now were incredibly important. I had urges and instincts I never understood. Perhaps that was the price one paid for morphing into such a different, sentient lifeform.
I could hear my friend yelling at the man who shot me through his wrist speaker. He was angry. I had never heard him speak so lividly. Was… was he that way for me?
No.
He couldn’t be.
We had just met. I was a strange alien who didn’t understand anything about his culture. Who asked him questions about love that made him uncomfortable, and spent hours sitting silently while I tried to find some way home.
“Cheer up there, buttercup. You’re going to be an absolute Rockstar back home.”