Alien Caller (21 page)

With thoughts
like that running back and forth through her tired brain, it was
good to have a friend turn up to take her away from her
worries.

“Done and then
some.” It was good to have a friend to talk to, someone she had
known for many years, and she even managed a small smile. “The
Mother has a creative sense of humour.”

Cyrea indicated
the other side of the park bench and Myra sat down beside her
without so much as a doubt. That was good when everyone else was
staring at her twice or three times, even her other colleagues. But
then they were as close as sisters.

“How’s your
family?”

“Shocked,
devastated, embarrassed. Everything you’d expect. My father
couldn’t even talk to me.” And that hurt. That she’d embarrassed
them she’d already known. But that she’d done it so badly that her
own father didn’t even know what to say; she hadn’t expected that.
But then she hadn’t expected any of this either, and her father
sounding confused and uncertain when he was normally neither of
those things, that just made things worse. In the end he just
talked about the farm, trying anything to avoid the subject. Maybe
that was better than her mother’s wailing though.

“You’d expect
that.” Myra smiled at her. “Even if things had gone normally you’d
expect it to be hard. It’ll just take time.”

“Time?” It was
the last thing she needed to hear just then, as it reminded her
anew that she had to go back to him. He was her mate. For the rest
of her life, he was her mate. And that was the truly scary part.
She was mated.

“Time. You’ve
always got time you know. Things may have gone pear shaped as the
humans say, but in the end it doesn’t matter. You’ve got the time
you need to fix them.”

“But how do I
fix them?”

“The same way
everyone does. You take the time you need, you talk with your mate.
Get to know each other properly. Build your home together.”

Myra was right
of course. She was often right but thankfully she was never
self-righteous with it. Maybe that came with being a theologian as
well as a speaker. Someone who studied the works of the Mother as
well as knowing the words of the prophets. Then again maybe she was
just very practical.

Cyrea sighed
quietly. A part of her wished it was otherwise; a large confused
and worried part. But in the end she simply had to deal with what
had happened. She had a mate. For better or worse she had a mate.
There was no point in wishing it hadn't happened. The only thing to
do was accept it and move on.

Chapter
Eight.

It was Friday
the following week when David finally managed to leave his
cottage.

At that he
didn’t really want to. It was just that he was out of essential
supplies like food, drink and toilet paper. Things had been getting
tight until then, and they’d dined on toast for two days as they
consumed the last of his frozen bread. He resolved to do a very big
shop so he could put off having to go back to the supermarket for
as long as possible.

Still it was
good to be out. He missed Cyrea, even though he knew he would see
her again in only a few hours. Having said that the peace and
serenity of the drive to town was wonderful.

Physically he
hoped it would also give him a chance to recover somewhat from his
exertions. He needed all the recovery he could get.

They had been
insatiable. There was simply no other word to describe their time
together. In nearly ten days they had done nothing more than make
love, morning, noon and night. It was exhausting work, and he
fancied they had done as much exercise in bed as they had missed
out on in the gym. Though they had managed a few sessions there as
well, until their hormones ended the sessions early. Swimming too
had proved nearly impossible as they barely got in to the water
before they had to get out. Sometimes they hadn’t made it out. They
were like teenagers.

But on the
other hand, working out and swimming were now a lot more fun. The
competition had gone, or at least the bad side of it, and they were
actually learning to cooperate. Each helped the other with their
routine and learnt from the other in the process.

David had
started moving back into the free weights and bench pressing with
Cyrea acting as his spotter. On his own he’d mostly stuck to the
machine press, always worried about dropping the bar on his neck,
but with Cyrea present he didn't have that fear any longer. And the
view while he was pressing was to die for. Cyrea was working with
him on his flexibility as well. Now that they weren’t at war any
longer he could accept her guidance. In turn he was helping her
with her strength, encouraging her to push herself in ways she
hadn’t before.

Daily life had
occasionally been strained, though not terribly. They were sharing
everything, including the cooking and cleaning, and learning about
each other’s needs in the process. There was a lot to learn, though
that he figured was no different than whenever any two people moved
in together. The fact that she was from another world was probably
less disorienting then the fact that he was suddenly sharing his
home and his life with another. Not that he minded.

Besides,
physically they weren’t that different. They could eat the same
food, use the same toothpaste and shampoo. In fact the only
difference between living with Cyrea or with a human woman was that
he had to change the sheets every few days or start to itch, and
that was no great hassle.

Of course there
were other concerns. He wanted to take her exploring to more than
just the local lake and valleys, but had to be careful in case
someone spotted her who wasn’t one of the aliens’ confidants. The
same applied to going driving in the country, or just expecting
visitors. Surprisingly he did receive a few. The odd neighbour
dropped by, as well as various service men when things broke down,
and a few hunting and fishing friends. Still, thus far they had
managed to navigate their way around the worst of it without too
many worries, and the rewards were more than worth it.

Emotionally it
had been a wonderful time, as they explored each other in every
way. And the more they explored, the more they liked. For David,
Cyrea was turning out to be the woman of his dreams even though
he’d never dreamed of a woman. Least of all an alien woman. She was
so like him in so many ways it kept surprising him. She was an
investigator and an officer, but unlike him she was still a
believer in her work. She was where he had been more than a dozen
years earlier when he’d first started with the CIA. That was a time
when he’d still been one of the good guys, defending the innocent
against the bad. Before the world had suddenly become so grey.

He loved that
idealism that still lived within her, and when he was close to her
he felt close to it as well. Almost close enough to forget the very
real problems that beset him. The enemies he’d made, the things
he’d done, the secrets he was keeping from her. When he was with
her, they didn’t matter. He simply forgot them all. It was only
when he was alone that the nightmares crept back like thieves in
the night, and with them the fear that when she learned of them
she’d run screaming. Anyone would.

In turn Cyrea
loved his discipline and the way he approached problems. He was in
some ways where she wanted to be in a few more years, though
without the cynicism. She criticised him for that cold eye as she
called it. Cyrea had been working as an officer now for seven or
eight years; long enough to have mastered the basics and make her a
good officer, but part of her would always believe she was still
too flighty, too prone to doing the wrong thing in haste. For her
he was self-control personified. She was wrong of course. David had
told her that repeatedly. Her concerns were always a sign of an
excellent officer. Those that thought they knew everything were the
ones who made the most and the worst mistakes.

In some ways
Cyrea was also everything he’d wished he could be. She was a family
girl, with parents and brothers and sisters, whereas he had been
raised an orphan after the premature death of his parents. He loved
to listen to her stories about growing up on the farm. They were so
warm and happy, and so almost perfectly human, whereas his own
childhood was a cold alien place by comparison. When she spoke
about them he just held her close, closed his eyes and imagined her
childhood as it must have been. He only wished he could have
brought similar stories for her to enjoy. Instead he had his own
supply of tales he couldn’t tell, most of them both bitter and
classified. Even if he could tell her, David knew he wouldn’t want
to. His past was simply too dark to lay on her. And too
shameful.

Humour was
deeply ingrained in both of them, with neither of them able to
resist a joke, and neither afraid to laugh long and loud, or play
the clown. For the moment it was all still new to them, and perhaps
they laughed longer and louder than they should, but they also knew
it was a gift and they should enjoy it. Besides, he couldn’t see
them ever losing their laughter.

They shared
similar tastes in many things too, not least of all music. Cyrea
loved the classic rock that he listened to, finding it almost
identical to their dance music of the previous century. Cyrea’s
grandparents had introduced her to the back beat as a child, and
from then everything else had been second best. It was something he
could understand perfectly. Often they had spent the days just
listening to the music of the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Elton John and
so many others, making love and singing, badly. Neither of them
could sing, but if they turned up the stereo, it didn’t really
matter. At night they turned it down and drifted to sleep to the
sounds of Enya and Deep Forest.

Soon, Cyrea had
promised, she would bring him some recordings of the music of her
home, and he was dying to hear them. Music from another world. In
his wildest dreams he’d never even considered the idea, but soon he
was going to be listening to it. Maybe even that evening.

She also
promised to bring back some spices. A necessity when he was trying
to prepare food for her, and yet had no idea what she liked. Plus
he was looking forward to sampling the cuisine of another world.
New tastes, new flavours. He couldn’t begin to imagine what she
could show him, but he was dying to find out.

There were
surprises too, things he could never have imagined. For a start she
was religious, believing emphatically in Mother Lei, her people’s
name for God. In fact she was even a speaker as she translated it,
someone who had learned all her people’s religious texts and could
quote them by heart. That seemed wrong somehow. She was from an
advanced alien race, with spaceships and technology he could barely
begin to dream of, yet her people believed completely that there
was a creator.

She had told
him at length about the divine moment when the universe had been
born, created from nothing, by no one, and how all of their
science, every single scrap of knowledge they could glean from the
universe would never explain that. The same was true of the other
four space travelling races they knew. They all accepted some sort
of creator. It seemed that their knowledge had become so far
advanced that they had finally worked out what was beyond them to
understand. No doubt there were going to be some upset atheists on
Earth when they found that out.

Of course there
would be some upset believers as well, since her people didn't
follow any of mankind’s faiths. Though they saw the spark of the
creator in everything it wasn't the same. Rather they believed in a
creator and lots and lots of prophets. People divinely inspired who
saw a little deeper into the universe than others. But they had no
Son of God. Jesus to them would have simply been a prophet. They
had no belief in heaven and hell. Though they accepted that there
was something after, they said that what came next came next. It
wasn't for them to know it until the time.

She was also an
artist. All her people were. Even though she claimed she wasn’t a
painter she had enormous skill in that direction, and a strange
view of what she should do in another person’s home. He’d
discovered that on their first full day together when she’d
returned from the ship with a tool box full of paints, and started
work on the main wall in his lounge without any warning. That had
caught him by surprise at first but in the end he had to admit, the
wall hadn’t been the most attractive part of the house to begin
with, and with a clean white base coat it looked better from the
beginning. Besides, it was fun to watch her at work, tracing out
lines with chunks of charcoal, something that seemed somewhat
primitive to him, especially for a people with space travel, and
then little by little colouring in the strange alien landscape she
had sketched.

It was slow
work, painstaking in its detail, and many times she cursed as she
sat there, applying paint in ever-thicker layers of colour and
texture as she brought the wall to life. But it was also fun to
watch, even to lie down on the heavy carpet beside her and study
what she was drawing, and to study her. Maybe the latter was what
he truly enjoyed. The way that she chewed at her lip a little as
she worked, sighed and muttered and moaned constantly as she
painted and repainted each and every spot, never completely
satisfied with what she’d done. And she looked surprisingly cute in
her painting get up. She was alien and yet so very human. But more
importantly, if he was supportive and maybe brought her a cup of
tea every so often as she worked, he’d get lucky. He’d got lucky a
lot.