Aliena Too (6 page)

“That is best.”

“See?” Maple said, though she had heard only Lida's side of the dialogue. “I knew Mom would forgive you.”

“Let's hope Quincy does.” They walked on to where the blue starfish waited, and Maple returned to the pink starfish. “Dear—”

“Kiss me.” He lifted a limb.

She leaned forward and kissed the wall opposite the tip of the limb. That seemed to cover it. Except for one thing. “I was jealous of you being with any other female. Even though I've been giving sex to another male. That's crazy, and I'm sorry. And if you want to be with Aliena, you have my leave. She's a fine creature. As you said, we have to move on.”

“I will always love you, Li.”

“And I you. That won't change.”

“It won't change,” he agreed.

“I will visit you again.”

“I will be glad to see you.”

That was it. Visiting hours were over. She knew because the lights blinked briefly.

“That's a nice thing you said to Mom,” Maple said as they returned to the box where they had left Gloaming. “I don't like her being lonely.”

“You do know she can hear you now?”

“Sure. The starfish can hear everything in the station, anyway. Hi, Mom!”

“Hi, Maple,” Aliena said. Lida relayed the message.

Gloaming emerged from the box as they approached. “Physically I am in good health,” he reported. “Emotionally, mixed.”

“We're working on it,” Lida said, momentarily amused.

“There is something I should know?”

Lida made what she hoped came across as an obscure smile. “Not yet.”

They rejoined Sam and Martha, who were playing poker with a male and female robot. They were evidently winning, as they had good piles of poker chips. How was that possible?

“Machines aren't good at bluffing,” Sam explained.

“But they're learning,” Martha said.

They left the chips behind. Evidently they were only markers, not real cash. It had been a game for fun. Did advanced alien robots have fun? Lida decided not to inquire.

They entered the shuttle, and a seeming instant later were back on Earth. That stasis was remarkable!

Back on the train out of the desert, Sam and Martha retired again. Maple set up another computer game. “I am tired, having had an emotional workout,” Lida told Gloaming. “I imagine you are too. I will give you sex if you want it, but all I really want for myself is to hold your hand and sleep.”

“That will do,” he agreed. If he was disappointed that she did not speak of love, he concealed it.

“But I think it is coming closer,” she said as they lay on the bed. She did not need to say what.

The day of the resumption of the opera came, and Lida was there in the orchestra with Gloaming in the audience. Minutes before the opening curtain, there was a hurried conference. “There may be a delay,” the director explained quietly to the orchestra and others. “Our lead singer's plane was diverted because of a bomb threat, and landed in another city. He will not be able to get here until tomorrow. We don't have a backup for that role; it's too complicated. We may simply have to postpone it and refund today's tickets. We hate that.”

“I know someone who just might do it,” Lida said before she thought it through. She got up and faced the audience. She caught Gloaming's eye, which wasn't hard to do as it was always on her, and made a small nod.

Gloaming got up and made his way to her. “They need a phantom. Can you do it?” Because he had been watching the rehearsals and the performances, because of her, and had an eidetic memory for music.

“Yes.”

She led him to the director. “This is my husband. He—he is a musician and he knows the opera. He can play the part.” But her knees were quaking. Could he really do it? This was a three-hour performance, and he had had no rehearsals.

The director looked extremely doubtful, as he had every right to be. “You're sure?”

“Yes,” Gloaming said simply.

The director checked. “Sing a bar from the ‘Music of the Night' sequence.”

Gloaming burst into song. “Turn your face away from the garish light of day—”

Heads turned in the orchestra. They recognized Gloaming from the time he had taken Lida's place in the violin section, but hadn't heard him sing before. They were clearly impressed.

“That's enough.” For, of course, his voice was perfect. Anyone might sing that section, but no one could sing the way Gloaming could, and that was immediately apparent. There was special power and finesse, and he had every nuance right. Because he had heard the opera performed several times. For him, that was enough. “Can you act it too?”

“Yes.”

“Come to the dressing room for costuming.” The director led Gloaming away.

Lida did not relax. She knew better than anyone else how potent Gloaming was with music, but this was no incidental piece. Could he really do it, or was this a disaster in the making?

The opera started on time. Lida played her music along with the others. The lead role did not start until later in the story. Until it did, she was distinctly nervous.

Then it came. And Gloaming was perfect. Even the fact of the mask helped, because it fudged the identity of the singer. But it hardly mattered: he had it down pat. He never missed a cue, and his voice was superlative. He seemed born for the part. At the conclusion there was a standing ovation, and it wasn't just for the opera because it hadn't occurred before. It was for the lead singer. She saw that more than one reporter had appeared. They wanted to interview the superlative singer from nowhere. She had to intercept that.

“That was amazing!” the director said as the show concluded. “You have surely performed professionally many times before! I am amazed we haven't heard of you.”

Gloaming opened his mouth. Lida almost threw herself between them. “My husband is tired. I must get him home immediately. You understand.” She bustled him off before the director could protest.

She took him out the back way and got him to the car. Sam and Martha appeared, running interference. The four of them bustled into the car and drove off.

“I had to do it,” Lida said. “His origin would have been exposed.”

“It may be too late,” Sam said as he drove. “They are already converging on the house.”

“Damn! We can't go home. I should have thought of this before I volunteered him for the role. It never occurred to me that success would be a problem. I was worried about failure.”

“We need to decide where else to go where we won't be found for a few hours,” Martha said. “Until the authorities get a handle on the situation. We sort of threw them a curve.” She was busy with her cell phone, contacting key people.

Lida had a flash of inspiration. “The beach!”

“At night?” Sam asked.

“Yes! It is time.”

Sam didn't argue. He headed for the beach. It was a two-hour drive, but certainly it was not where anyone would guess they were going.

Lida took Gloaming's hand. “You were magnificent!”

“You are pleased?”

“Oh, yes! I am going to show you how pleased I am. But now rest, until we get there.” She held his hand, as for sleep.

Gloaming obediently slept. She had learned how to manage him in such respects.

“When we get there,” she murmured to Martha, “let us go to the water and don't interfere. This is special.”

Martha nodded, understanding.

They reached the beach at midnight. The lights were on near the resort areas, but the water was black in the night. Lida squeezed Gloaming's hand, awakening him. “Take off your clothes. We're going for a swim in the sea.”

“The sea!” he said, suddenly alert. He quickly got out and doffed his costume, which there had not been time to change.

Lida got out of her own clothes and stood beside the car, naked. The night was warm and she knew the water would be too. That was ideal. “We'll go together.” She took his hand and guided him toward the water.

“Lida, you know the effect the sea will have on me.”

“I do. Gloaming, I love you.”

He stared at her in the lamplight. Then he began to hum. It was a high single note, long sustained. He was singing, his style. It was the song of joy.

They ran together to the water. They plunged in. Then he clasped her, still humming, and bore her down in the surf. He kissed her, still sounding the note, and his member plunged into her eager body. She felt the almost instant heat of his emission within her. It triggered her own response, and she climaxed around him, kissing him all the while.

Then they subsided, while the waves surged around them. “Oh, Lida!” he said at last. “I have longed for this moment.”

“So have I,” she said, adjusting her glasses, which had somehow remained in place. That meant, of course, that Aliena knew. “But I couldn't make my heart hurry.”

“Now I am happy.”

“So am I.”

“If I may ask—”

“It was what I learned at the space station. Aliena is lonely and wants human company. She wants to be with Quincy, and he wants to be with her. But they couldn't do it until I gave my leave, and I couldn't until I was ready to love you. So it was time. Then when you performed so well in the opera—” She spread her hands in the water. “It was time,” she repeated.

“It was time,” Aliena agreed.

“May I kiss you again?”

She struck his shoulder with her fist in a mock attack. “Don't ask, dodo!
Do
it! You have the onus. Anytime.” But she didn't wait on him. She kissed him, then rolled with him in the water, feeling his arousal building again. She wrapped her arms and legs about him and squeezed her breasts hard against him as his hands clamped on her buttocks.

He resumed his Note of Joy. His member stiffened and drove into her again, and again they climaxed together.

At length they returned to the car, where Sam and Martha waited. “We made it,” she said simply, as if they didn't know.

“We noticed,” Sam said. “We watched, as we are required to do. That set us off, and we did it in the car.”

“We were very unprofessional,” Martha confessed. She returned to her cell phone.

“There's just something about the starfish Song,” Sam said. “We saw it with Aliena, too.”

“Of course they did,” Aliena agreed. “On this very beach. That's how they knew to come here.”

“The word is out,” Martha said. “We'll have to go into public mode. A bit prematurely, but not by much, actually.”

They started the drive back. Soon police cars intercepted them, silently, and escorted them home. A police cordon had been thrown around the house, holding back the crowd that ringed it.

“You kids get a night's sleep, or whatever,” Sam said as they pulled in. “Tomorrow will be busy.”

They took him at his word. They retired to the bedroom, where they lay together kissing and holding hands. “I am so glad you decided,” Gloaming said. “You taught me love, and it burst out of me. I never felt such emotion before.”

“I still do love Quincy. But now I love you too. The way Brom loves Aliena, and also Star.”

“I am glad.” Then they slept.

In the morning they showered, dressed, ate, and announced themselves prepared for the day. There followed a rush of public appearances as Gloaming was introduced as Gloaming the Star-Man, the male counterpart to Star the Star-Woman. His formal Unveiling had been preempted by the opera incident. No one blamed Lida, but she knew it was her fault.

“It's just one of those things,” Grandfather Johnson said. “Plans go oft agley.”

Still, she might have reconsidered had she realized what would happen. She was not a politician and did not think in such terms. Lida was now part of the sidelines, as she was glad to be, though women's programs interviewed her because of her proximity to the figure of the day.

And of course Gloaming sang bits from the opera that had blown his cover, because no human man could have done the same. Crowds gathered to hear his beautiful voice.

They toured the world, heavily guarded, because the nuts were always out there, but well received everywhere. Gloaming sang in the language of whatever nation they visited, a detail that was much appreciated. It was a whirlwind of publicity that often left Lida figuratively gasping.

Just one thing was missing: they never went near Star, the other starfish envoy, also known for her singing. “Why is that?” Lida asked Sam.

“Too risky,” Sam replied. “We need to let the excitement die down some before we can put them together where a single bomb might take them out.”

She had to concede the validity of the caution. Sam, Martha, and the rest of the security apparatus kept most of their business out of sight, but there was quite real danger. Keeping the two starfish envoys apart made sense, for now.

Then Lida saw a news item. Health care was on the way to becoming universal, especially since the starfish supported it, but there were families that still slipped through the cracks. This one was about a five-year-old boy named Jeb who had a congenital condition that would cost him his life in a few more years if he didn't receive appropriate treatment. The treatment was fabulously expensive, and the family had no insurance. Death seemed likely.

“We need to help that boy,” Lida said.

“It is policy not to interfere in such matters,” Martha said. “Local government can get huffy.”

“Even if someone dies because they won't act?”

“This is politics. If we try to intervene, there could be hell to pay, messing up the reputation of the starfish. It's ugly, but there it is.”

“Lida wants it fixed,” Gloaming said. “It must be fixed.”

Sam and Martha exchanged a glance. Gloaming had power now, as Star did, and it wasn't wise to balk at him. Lida realized that she had done it again. Gloaming listened to her and supported her, in anything. That was flattering, but not always wise. “Maybe we can think of something,” Sam said.