Inside her bag, her fingers located a small perfume bottle. She rummaged around for some cotton pads and poured a little perfume onto one in lieu of surgical spirit. She rolled up her sleeve and wiped down her skin, then quickly applied the pendant.
A faint tingle of pain; she’d hit the same spot as before. But the sting soon vanished, and her skin grew hot. She could feel the liquid seeping in.
Good. Now she’d be able to sleep tonight.
Emma let out a long breath and began to climb the stairs. Her head was hot, and she felt herself becoming cheerier and a little reckless. Her fatigue eased and her body felt lighter.
‘Aahh, who gives a shit, anyway?’ But no sooner did this thought reach her lips than she found herself wondering, who gives a shit about what? Emma clung on to the banister, finally making it to the top of the stairs. She opened the door to find the room dark.
Her high was intensifying by the second. With eyes closed, she took off her clothes and hid her pendant under her pillow. She burrowed her way under the covers and then, feeling a sudden pang of thirst, turned on the light.
‘Sol!’
He was standing there beside the bed.
‘What are you doing?’ Emma tried to say, but she was slurring badly. She must have taken too much.
‘Thinking,’ he said quietly.
‘In the pitch dark?’
His green face loomed in closer. He was staring at her exposed skin, she realized. Hurriedly, she made to pull the sheet up to her chin. His hands stopped her, twisting her arm.
‘Ow! That hurts!’
‘Let me see.’
Emma shut her eyes. Sol’s gaze affixed itself to the purple track marks on the inside of her arm. After a little while, he let go.
‘Show me. Show me what you hid.’ His voice was as quiet and measured as ever. She tried pinning him with a terrifying glare. His expression remained unchanged.
Emma pulled out the pendant from under the pillow. Sol took it from her and threw it down the rubbish chute.
‘What did you do that for? What does it matter what I get up to, anyway? It’s got nothing to do with you,’ she objected futilely.
‘That’s hardly true. Keep this up and you’ll be a junkie soon enough. Surely you can see that? If you wind up an invalid, I’m going back home.’
This reaction tickled Emma. So she was the reason Sol was staying here on Earth? But then she understood another layer of meaning to his words.
‘You’re saying if something bad happened to me, you’d just leave?’
Part of her sometimes wished that would actually happen. The burden of living with a Meelian was getting harder and harder to bear.
Emma’s younger sister, who was married to the director of the Space Bureau, had told her that ‘provincial sorts like that were to be pitied’. The planet Meele was underdeveloped, apparently. Emma’s parents more or less agreed with this view, saying that Emma would be better off finding herself a nice Balian sergeant or a Kamiroyan musician, anything but a Meelian.
Emma herself thought that Sol was a bit too cerebral. Or maybe it was more that she was unable to give him what he wanted. She felt constricted. She’d come to believe, since being with Sol, that she was stupid. This wasn’t a fun sensation. She hadn’t yet cast off the kind of ambitions common to young people.
‘I don’t see what other choice I’d have. If you end up a junkie, you’ll be a totally different person. Besides, I want to go back to Meele.’
‘Oh, so that’s what you call love, is it?’ She pouted.
‘I’ve never loved anybody, Emma.’ He gave her a weak smile. Her pride was horribly wounded now.
‘I’ve taken a fancy to a lot of girls, but that’s different… That premonition I had when I met you, though – I don’t think it was mistaken. I knew from the first you’d be the last woman I was with.’
Still staring at her, Sol began to remove his pyjamas. This was a quirk of his, wearing his pyjamas during the day while lounging about in the house. Sol turned his nose up at the dancing and music that Emma liked. So what did he do instead? Nothing. Three times a week, he would stop by the Alien Journalists’ Club on the top floor of the Aerospace Bureau. The rest of the time he seemed to spend in his pyjamas, absorbed in thought.
Totally naked now, Sol got into bed.
‘You know, I can never tell what’s going on in that head of yours,’ Emma said.
‘That’s because you’re weak-minded,’ he said, completely serious. He sounded irritated.
‘Remind me again, what did you come to Earth to do in the first place?’
Was Sol actually a spy? It had been Emma’s sister who’d first put that idea into her head. Initially she’d scoffed at it, but now she was becoming suspicious.
‘I’m a poet.’
‘Oh, don’t give me that again!’ Emma swerved from Sol’s lips. Once they started kissing, she wouldn’t be able grill him any further. Besides, she’d been in the arms of another man outside the apartment, and the taste and the feel of him still lingered with her.
‘Don’t make me repeat myself then.’ Sol frowned at her.
‘You couldn’t even fill a school newsletter with the amount that you produce.’
‘That’s not a problem where I’m from. Our newspapers are less than half the size of the ones on Earth, and some days they’re only four pages long. There’s no evening paper, either. It’s an easy-going sort of place. It’s our agriculture and livestock that keep the place going. We’ve got a good climate. Nobody really wants an important job, and they only accept one out of a sense of duty. Even then, there’s nothing pathological about the way that people work. Unlike your sister’s husband, who only makes it home twice a week.’
‘You’ve got mines on Meele too, though, right? Like the one where the big ruby you gave me came from. I lost that, by the way.’
‘I’ll get you another one when I go back. Hey, how about I take you back with me some time?’ Sol stared at her intently as he said this.
Emma gave him a non-committal ‘Hmm.’
In truth, she had no intention of doing any such thing at the moment. If the two of them went to Meele, Sol would probably end up working in a wind-turbine power station or something. She’d take care of the vegetable patch, enjoy the occasional afternoon stroll with him, have kids (yikes!) and gradually get old. Once a year or so, he might give her a beautiful ring or bracelet, but she’d have no friends from Earth around to show them off to. The only Terrans around on Meele were the piratical mine-raiders, hiding behind their Scientific Investigation Commission accreditation, and tourists who were hot on far-flung destinations. Terrans didn’t have the best reputation over there, thanks to their tendency to dig everything and anything up.
Sol took his cigarettes from the shelf on the headboard.
‘How will you cope, though, if you ever do go back to Meele? You say the Terran air has tainted me, but that’s gotta be true of you too, after all these years.’
Sol brought the cigarette to his lips, blew out a plume of smoke, and answered.
‘I’ll give up smoking if I go back. I’ve been here fifteen years, though – it’s only natural that I’ve picked up some of the Terran vices.’
Sol’s parents had come to Earth as goodwill ambassadors. But when their term of service ended, they had both become mentally ill and returned home. Sol, whose Terran education had been publicly funded, had spent most of his adolescence here – if you defined adolescence as between the ages of fifteen and twenty.
A year on Sol’s home planet was just four days longer than on Earth. Sol would soon be turning thirty.
‘I’m not talking about smoking! I mean, you get irritated quickly. Most Meelians are good-natured and contemplative, and quiet to boot. It’s not the quietude of pure saints, though – they’re quiet like the best boxers are quiet.’