Fugitive From Asteron Read online

  The burning liquid spilled from my eyes just as I was denying its existence. I could feel the tiny sequins moisten where my head lay against Kristin’s dress. I heard my own tortured cries as the raw wounds still blistered my memory, until finally there were no cries left. Then, feeling spent, I lay down on the blanket, astonished at my outburst and suddenly feeling strangely calm.

  For a long, quiet moment, Kristin held my hand. Then she whispered, her voice deep with sorrow, “Nothing like that can ever happen here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean here we can have babies or not, and it’s nobody’s business. It’s simple. You go to Quick Fix. If you don’t want to have babies, you get a pill, and its effect lasts for years. If you decide later that you want a baby, you go back to Quick Fix and ask for another pill to reverse the previous one’s effects. There are pills for men and women. So you never have to be afraid of this again.”

  “How do you know about these pills?”

  “Because I went to Quick Fix and got one, so I . . . wouldn’t . . .”

  “When did you do this, Kristin?”

  She lowered her head shyly. I lifted it so that her eyes were level with mine. “When I met you,” she whispered. Her face reddened as I somehow had the life left in me to stare at her . . . rudely. “But I don’t want you to believe me.” She moved away. “Don’t believe any woman. Go to Quick Fix and get your own pill.”

  “But does the state not regulate baby production?”

  “Of course not.”

  “But do you not have genetics?”

  “Of course. We live until we’re 150 years old. Part of that’s due to our doctors, who can fix anything. They have techniques to repair and replace body parts. And they can even fix those scars on your neck because cosmetic surgery is incredibly advanced. But a lot of our long lifespan is due to the diseases we can eliminate through gene research.”

  “But who plans for the children that are produced?”

  “Everyone. People decide for themselves.”

  “But if people are left to decide for themselves, what if their children are undesirable to the public?”

  “We don’t produce children for the public. In fact, somebody’s kids are none of anybody else’s business.”

  “But if this matter is important, then it has to be controlled, no?”

  “Do you want the important things in your life decided by somebody else? Alex, don’t you see, it’s not any one thing? It’s not as if I’m free only to fly my plane, or to disagree with my instructor, or to contradict the mayor, or to choose my own boyfriend. You don’t have to keep asking the same question every time a new issue comes up. You don’t have to worry about me. I’m free, period. And so are you. Alex, you’re free of Cosmona forever.”

  I looked away, suddenly feeling . . . guilty.

  “I never imagined what a . . . horrible . . . place that is!” She reached over to me, her long, silky fingers stroking my face. “Now I understand why you keep wanting to rescue me. And I like being rescued by you, but Alex, there’s no real danger. You don’t have to torture yourself.”

  I was beginning to understand, I thought, as I placed my arms around Kristin. I listened for the terrible voice inside me, but, incredibly, it was gone. It seemed to have been washed away with my tears, because I felt somehow free of it. I felt somehow . . . free. I kissed Kristin’s mouth, her eyes, her hair. She flung her head back loosely, her neck losing its tension, her body moving with only the pressure of my mouth, inviting me to do more.

  Then she pushed away. “No.” Her voice was weak, but her arms were strong as they resisted me. “Go to Quick Fix and find out for yourself. Then you won’t have to depend on anybody’s word.”

  “But Quick Fix is not here. And you are.”

  “Alex, you’re smiling.”

  I felt somehow lighter, as if a heavy weight had been lifted from my life. “I will go to Quick Fix later, Kristin. Now, I will be what is called your boyfriend.”

  I drew her close to me and wrapped the blanket around us. With a tiny tug on the scant supports of the dress, which I had studied over dinner, there were no more sparkling sequins, but only soft, warm skin in the darkness. Then, for the first time since I came to Earth, it was I who taught Kristin about a matter she did not yet know, and this fact seemed strangely exciting to both of us.

  I raised myself to gaze at her face, to caress it, to kiss it softly. “Kristin, what is it called when you savor wine, when you drink it slowly to feel all the pleasing sensations that warm you, except it is not wine you want to savor, but a person you want to drink slowly?”

  “Tenderness. It’s called tenderness.”

  “And what is it called when every feature about another becomes something you want to prize, like a voice so pleasing it makes you want to dance to it, or laughter so sweet it makes you want to taste the mouth that made its sound?”

  “Caring. It’s called caring.”

  “And what is it called when your thoughts fix obsessively on little things that make you ache inside, like a sweater you want to slide your hands under, or a zipper you want to tug at?”

  “Desire. It’s called desire.”

  “And did you call this making love?”

  “Oh yes, honey, yes.”

  Then there were no more words, only two bodies wrapped together on a mountain, with the lights of the world below as the backdrop for an act that was, to use my new word, joyful.

  After leaving Kristin that evening, I stopped at a Quick Fix booth to find, unsurprisingly, that everything she had told me was true. Here on Earth, I thought, Kristin and I could move about in the open because our goal was to fulfill our lives and all roads were paved to take us there. But what if we lived in a place where we found only roadblocks on our path? I tried to understand what drove Reevah to lie to me, causing her to skid off a cliff—and what drove me to believe her.

  As I swallowed a tiny pill with the power to kill a monstrous voice that paralyzed me, I read the paper that Quick Fix emitted when it scanned me. The report said that the pill would be effective in my body and I would function normally, but it did not mention my species. I apparently belonged to a humanoid group capable of crying. Babies cried on Asteron, but only until they reached the state of mental numbness that marked maturity. That was true, I thought, except in Reevah’s case. I wondered if she had been an alien, because Reevah could laugh and cry easily like the Earthlings.

  With the great sense of relief that the little pill gave me, I walked toward my apartment complex, a group of detached units set along a courtyard off a main street. I felt an unusual calm as I passed the Earthlings’ well-kept houses with fragrant gardens, lighted windows with tidy furnishings inside, children’s toys stowed on the porches, and colorful and varied vehicles on the road. Every sight was one of contentment. At that moment, I was held by the serenity of Earthling life. I felt oddly unconcerned with danger and ready to believe Kristin’s assurance that the vast territory of freedom also reached the ground where I stood.

  Tired of fearing people, I thought that maybe, just this one special night, I might return home through the front entrance of the complex, instead of sneaking around the back as I normally did. Perhaps I would even wave to the person I always avoided, the clerk in the management office. His small building, which stood on the street in front of the courtyard of dwellings, was open all hours to rent furnished units. I reminded myself to give him another month’s rent on payday. When I had first arrived, the possibility of staying alive longer than one month had not occurred to me. But this evening, especially, made me feel hopeful. The activity called making love seemed to agree with me, and with Kristin too, I thought, remembering our exciting moments and already aching for her again. Somehow, I was not surprised that the Earthlings had given the most beastlike of activities the most spiritual of names when performed by humans.

  Suddenly, all thoughts of relaxing my guard vanished. In the lamplight forty feet ahead, I saw t
wo police officers heading toward the rental office. These men did not have the same kind face with smiling eyes as Officer Hodges at Big Eats. I knew these two, and they knew me. Dressed as Earthling officials with their badges flashing on their shirts, the men opening the office door were Feran’s spies!

  I ducked into the bushes that surrounded the apartment complex and moved silently in the night toward the small office building. I crouched down to hide in the shrubbery underneath the side window of the office. It was opened a few inches, sufficient for me to hear. The men who had barked orders and shoved me around when I delivered supplies to their quarters on Asteron had different voices now, friendly tones that I had never heard from their vicious mouths, and they abundantly used Earthling contractions and expressions. They had learned their lessons well! They introduced themselves with phony names and asked the clerk’s name. They engaged briefly in what the Earthlings called small talk, a striking change from the big fists that spoke for them in their homeland.

  “Say, Joe, we’re looking for a young man for questioning, and we think he might be staying in this area,” said one of the spies.

  “Oh? Do you think he might be here?” I got a look at the clerk. He was the one who had rented me my apartment.

  “It’s possible,” said the other spy. “We’re questioning everyone in the area. He’s twenty-one years old, six-foot-two, black hair, blue eyes. He’s slim and athletic-looking.”

  “Gee, I’ve got twenty-five units. A lot of guys come and go all the time, officer.”

  “This kid’s an alien, but he looks like one of us. His name’s Arial, although he probably changed it. He arrived here just three weeks ago. Did you happen to see a spacecraft in the sky about that time, one that looked like it was disoriented?”

  “I see crafts all the time, but I don’t remember anything out of the ordinary, no.”

  “Do you know of any abandoned spacecraft, or any crashes that maybe weren’t reported to us?”

  “No.”

  “The kid’s a pilot, but he could be working in any job. Here’s a picture of him.”

  The spies no doubt had my photo identification from Asteron. I wondered if the desperate creature I had been back then resembled me today, with my new hair styling, wardrobe, and ample diet.

  “Wow, this straggly kid looks like he’s starving. I haven’t seen anyone like that here,” said the clerk.

  I felt relieved that Kristin had insisted I get a new look. This also gave me hope that the spies would be unable to match my photo via face-recognition programs to that of any new hires at MAS, should they suspect I might be there. The spies would give up now, at least with the clerk, I hoped. But that was not to be.

  One of them was persistent. “He speaks English. But in a stilted way, without contractions. And he’s got markings around his neck—scars.”

  “Oh, yes. I did rent to someone like that. A few weeks ago, yes. He’s still here.”

  I closed my eyes and missed a breath.

  “Could you look up his records for us, Joe, if you please?” said one of the spies, who seemed to know his manners, although he had never wasted them on me.

  “Let’s see,” the clerk said. I heard the light taps of his fingertips on a screen. “He’s in unit 11, the one near the end of the cul-de-sac. J. White. That’s his name.”

  I had decided to rent without Kristin’s help, so I could give a phony Earthling name. I had chosen a common one that I had found in an electronic directory of Rising Tide’s residents, which I had looked through in the rental office while waiting to check in. There were dozens of people in the area with the surname White whose first names began with J.

  “What does the J stand for?” One of the spies asked.

  “Don’t know. He didn’t say.”

  “And what other information do you have on him?”

  “Hmmm. None.”

  “None?”

  “As I recall, when he rented, he said he was in a hurry and he would come back later to fill out the rest of the information, but I guess we both forgot about it. He put a month down in cash, so I didn’t complain.”

  “Do you have another address on him?”

  “No.”

  “An employer’s name?”

  “Nope.”

  “Anybody else in that room?”

  “Nope.”

  “Any visitors or callers?”

  “Not that I know of. Say, is this guy dangerous?”

  One of the spies laughed. “Now, don’t go getting alarmed, Joe. We just want to talk to him.”

  “Well, I don’t know if he’s home,” said the clerk, “but I’ll call the apartment for you.”

  “Oh, don’t trouble yourself,” said the other spy. “We’ll just walk down there and see if he’s around. Hey, got a key for us, Joe?”

  “Not without a search warrant, of course,” replied the clerk, surprised.

  “Of course,” said the spy, laughing the matter off. “If we need one, we’ll come back tomorrow with it.”

  Of course, I thought, hunched in the foliage, Feran’s spies will be back with some kind of permission—a warrant—to search my apartment. That would happen just as soon as I gave Feran kisses! I knew the spies would be inside my door within minutes. But I would not be there, nor would any piece of information that could link me to the name Alexander or to MAS. After I had received Feran’s first message, I removed from my apartment anything having to do with my Earthling identity and job. And I had never worn my work clothes, with their MAS emblems, outside of the company. Kristin had never been here, because out of caution, I had not invited her.

  I was safe. I would wait until the spies headed toward my apartment, and then I would disappear from this complex forever. The spies would get a new wardrobe—my wardrobe, the animals!—but they would not get me, I thought.

  “We’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention us to Mr. J. White, if you happen to see him. Do you think you can do that for us, Joe?”

  “Sure, guys. Anything I can do to cooperate. But what’s this kid done?”

  “We don’t know. ES wants to locate him, that’s all.”

  “Earth Security? You mean this isn’t a local matter?” The clerk’s voice sounded grave. “Does it involve a threat to the . . . planet?”

  “Hey, take it easy, Joe.”

  “Is this guy a . . . spy?”

  “Like we said, we just want to talk to him."

  As I huddled in the bushes outside the window, I suddenly realized I would not be safe at all! I would not be able to vanish into the night and never come back. I had to get into my apartment. Before we left work that day, Kristin had given me a small bundle of flowers. When I came home to dress for dinner, I dropped the flowers in a glass of water in the kitchen. There was a card with the blossoms, a handwritten note from Kristin, that in my haste I had left there unread. The tension that curled like a snake around my stomach now squeezed it into a knot. Surely that note would contain her name!

  Before these thoughts were fully formed, I was racing along the backyards of the row of dwellings on one side of the courtyard. As I peered out to the street between two of the units near where I lived, I could see the spies reach the entrance of my home. I would have to destroy Kristin’s card because her name must not appear before Feran and Coquet! I would have to get to the card before they did, but they were already at my unit.

  I quickly arrived at my back door, where I heard the stealthy movements of the spies at the front. Rather than break in, they were being careful to pick the door lock silently to avoid arousing the guard and to take me by surprise, if I were inside. This kept them stalled outside for a few moments as I pressed my remote electronic key to open the back door and slipped soundlessly into the kitchen. In the darkness I grabbed Kristin’s card just as the spies entered through the front door. I thought I could feel the air whisk as they moved swiftly through the living room and bedroom.

  I heard one of them whisper gruffly in his real voice, “He i
s not here.”

  Before they reached the kitchen, I slipped out the back and ran, with Kristin’s card torn into pieces inside my mouth, ready to swallow if they seized me. I glanced back and saw the spies exit the kitchen and begin searching the yard. When I was a safe distance from them, I removed the soggy papers from my mouth and pieced them together:

  “To the Alexander from another world who brings a promise to me. Kristin.”

  Chapter 15

  The hum of the train’s engine sounded too soft for the powerful vehicle I was riding. The train’s speed melted rows of buildings outside my window into one brown smear. I was on the local commuter line called the Cheetah, a caravan of cars painted tawny in color with round black patches to match the coat of the Earth feline that provided inspiration for the train’s name. After eluding the spies, I had raced to the Cheetah station and hopped on the first train leaving Rising Tide in order to find new lodging elsewhere. As I sat in my seat, my fascination with this feat of Earthling engineering gave me a brief reprieve from my worries.

  Because it had no wheels and did not touch a track as it ran, the Cheetah looked more like a plane than a train. Propelled at the brisk clip of five hundred miles per hour, this bullet of a train enabled rural dwellers to commute to city jobs quickly. Disembarking passengers moved into a compartment called a cub, which was a small, rapidly accelerating and decelerating car that attached to the side of the main train, then separated from the Cheetah as it approached a station. This allowed people to exit from the cub without the Cheetah ever having to slow down for station stops. After the Cheetah passed a station, another cub that had picked up passengers gained speed and attached to the main train, bringing the new people onboard and collecting others for exit at the next stop. Like everything on Earth, the ride was coated with pleasure and convenience. For an extra coin, I had my choice of food, movies, music, and more.

  I reached into my pocket for my new electronic device, a recent purchase that Kristin had selected for me and insisted I get. “It’s a phone,” she explained as she programmed her phone number into it, “but it’s much more than that. Everything you ever wanted to know about anything is accessible through this thing.” I had no idea what she meant about the object’s greater capabilities, because where I came from, everything I ever wanted to know about anything was inaccessible. With my days jammed with activities, I had not yet explored my new purchase. Now was a good time to begin.