Cottonwood (50 page)

“Don’t do that!” T’aki wailed, slapping at Sanford’s arm as his father attempted to calm him down. “That’s not funny!”

She agreed it wasn’t and solemnly promised not to do it again, all the while thinking of the ship. How was it possible that she could plan to put Sanford on the ship and send him home, that she could even dream of herself as a part of the happy ending, and yet somehow never connect the two? Even now, when she could clearly see a hundred different scenarios leading up to the ship (not all of them ending well), she still could not quite see what came after, when Sanford was home on yang’Tak and she was the alien.

And where did that leave Kate? Because she could no more see a future without her sister than she could see one without Sanford. She already knew that she would try to insist that Kate stay behind when they rented that boat, just like she knew that Kate would refuse. She could hear it now: ‘We’re family, aren’t we? You’re all I’ve got.’

Of course, she didn’t think she could be one hundred percent forthcoming about the exact nature of her relationship with Sanford, not at the start, but there was time to work it casually into the conversation on the drive to California. Sarah had tolerated all of Kate’s stormy romances, the least she could do was reciprocate once. Besides, apart from the whole alien-thing, Sanford was the ideal man—strong, sensitive, a caring father, plus he could program the coffee maker. What more could a girl ask for? Okay, skin would be nice, but it didn’t pay to be too picky.

Smiling, Sarah looked into the rearview mirror for a soul-shoring glimpse of her man, something positive to keep in mind when she made that first uncertain introduction.

Her heart slammed into her ribs.

Kate sat beside Sanford in the back seat, looking out the window.

Her hair was down, tousled as with sleep. She wore the Bud Bowl V tee she used as a nightgown, pulled demurely down to her knees, and her feet were bare. As Sarah stared, Kate turned her head and met her eyes in the mirror. She smiled, Kate’s same old smile, tired and a bit distracted, but still glad to see her.

“
Sarah
!”

Her eyes snapped forward right about the time the logging truck whose lane she was slowly invading blasted his horn. She pulled right, veered onto the shoulder, and stomped the brakes flat.

Two aliens hit the auto-lock on their seat belts with twin rattle-cough cries of alarm. Sanford grabbed the gun before it could get away from him, but T’aki’s spaceship went on its maiden unassisted flight, banging high in the back of Sarah’s seat before clattering to the floor in two pieces. The van fishtailed wildly once, slightly twice, and came to a stop.

Sarah stared into the mirror, her heart pounding back into rhythm. Sanford, T’aki, no Kate. She slumped in her seat, both hands over her face, just breathing.

Seatbelts clicking. Sanford’s hands on her shoulders, squeezing her too tight. That was really the only problem with him; he never knew how hard he was squeezing her. “Are you all right?”

“Get back. Someone will see you.” She tried the mirror again. It stayed empty. “I’m fine. You were right. I need to stop. Next place I see, I promise.”

He didn’t seem to want to let go of her. She had to rub his joints for two or three minutes, making assurances, before he finally retreated to the safety of the back seat and its tinted windows. He gave T’aki his ship, after finding and snapping the wing back on, and the two of them sat very quietly and watched Sarah collect herself.

Too tired. Think of Kate, see Kate. Just that simple. If she’d been thinking of stopping for burgers, she’d have seen Mayor McCheese.

She looked in the mirror one more time, saw her man and his son, and smiled at them. Then she pulled out carefully onto the road.

There were no motels in Hastur, but there were two bed-and-breakfasts and three campgrounds. One of the campgrounds had cabins; it made her feel a little dizzy when she pulled up to the office, like time itself had wound back and she was just starting out again, two thousand miles reset and Cottonwood right behind her. God, she really was tired, wasn’t she?

The cabins were almost twice as expensive here, with none of the niceties. No café, no gift shop, only a couple of vending machines and a stack of brochures advertising rafting tours and hiking trails. She bought a couple bags of potato chips, since they’d gone over so well at the block party, two bottles of water, and a Dr. Pepper for herself. She didn’t want it, but she thought she ought to drink something. Her stomach was feeling a little flippy at the moment.

The cabin was every bit as private as the manager had assured her it would be, and much smaller than she expected—just a one-room kitchen/dining/living area, a half-bath, and a tiny bedroom—but the view was nice. Once the coast was clear and she waved them in, T’aki ran immediately to the back door and pressed himself against the sliding glass, gasping, “Father! Is it the ocean?”

Sarah let him look awhile before gently drawing the curtain. “No, honey, it’s just a river. But don’t go out there, okay? Lots of humans like to go out on the water when it’s hot like this and you might be seen.”

“Stay inside,” Sanford amplified, picking up his son to carry back to the tired couch in the front of the cabin. He pulled the decorative afghan off the back of the cushions to wrap T’aki in and then set him firmly down. “Away from windows.”

“Can’t I see the water? Please!”

“No.” Sanford softened his command with some shared breath and rubbed the boy’s throat gently. “We have to be careful now. All of us. And don’t jump on things here. You might break something.”

“Like what?” T’aki challenged, bouncing in his nest.

“Like your stubborn shell of a head.” Sanford gave the top of it a tap, then picked up the remote and turned the television on.

Sarah set their snacks down on the sofa as Sanford re-wrapped the afghan around his giggling son. She could have watched some TV with them, and a part of her did want to, if only to help her wind down a little, but the couch, like everything else here, was too small. She slipped away instead, thinking maybe it was best to give them a little privacy; they surely weren’t so used to spending every passing moment in someone else’s company, particularly a human’s. She wouldn’t be the best company right now anyway.

There was no phone, only an empty jack in one wall to mark the place one used to be, years and years ago. Who needed a land-line these days, when everyone had their own paz? No phone, and the need to call Kate and replace that awful hallucination in the mirror with something real was eating her up inside. Sarah stood staring at that jack, trying to think her way back down that road to the first place she might feasibly find another junker-phone, knowing already that she wouldn’t do it. Sanford wouldn’t let her even if she tried. And she didn’t need to, that was the thing she had to keep remembering. She didn’t need to, because Kate was fine. Heck, even if she did call, at this time of day, Kate would be at work and all she’d get would be the voice mail of her paz. Sarah would probably be pulling into her sister’s driveway before Kate got around to answering her messages.

Yeah, all of that.

The empty jack stared her down. Who the hell rented out vacation cabins and didn’t install friggin’ phones?

Sarah went to the bedroom (another empty jack, under the nightstand by the bed). She stepped out of her shoes, kicked them out of the way, started to undress and then gave up and walked half-naked over to the picturesque, if tiny, window. She propped her elbow up on the sill, propped her chin up on her elbow, and snapped the top off her soda.

‘I’d know if something were wrong, wouldn’t I?’ she thought, and waited, but no answer came to her out of the ether, neither a comforting glow to settle her mind nor an ominous weight in the pit of her newly-mended stomach. Just silence, uncertainty, and another six hours on the road ahead of her.

She hadn’t been there long, drinking her Dr. Pepper and watching the river flow by, when Sanford quietly joined her. She didn’t hear him at all, but she saw his reflection swim into focus in the glass until he was standing right beside her. He let her look for a while, then drew the curtain, just as she had done to T’aki. When she turned, protesting, he took away her soda, set it on the sill and picked her up.

She’d never been picked up before, unless she counted Samaritan snatching her off the causeway, and she was unprepared for how easily he did it. Although taller than she, Sanford’s alien body was much more narrowly-built, and his arms were actually slimmer than her own, if longer. She clutched at his neck reflexively, and he drummed his palps on her breastbone as he carried her to the bed and lay her down. He leaned over her, his face close and huge above her, and said, “Are you tired?”

She should have giggled, he was making such an obvious effort to win a laugh out of her. Instead, she reached up and stroked the smooth side of his armored head, even knowing he couldn’t feel it. “You amaze me,” she said.

The playful light in his eyes dimmed. He clicked softly, then chirred.

“I liked you even the first day I met you. And I trusted you. And now I love you.” She blushed, hearing that. Who says that to a man they’ve known only a few months, slept with only twice? “I don’t think it’s just the danger talking, either. I feel so safe when I’m with you, like this isn’t running, like nothing is wrong. I love you, Sanford.”

His eyes changed again, she couldn’t say just how. “You are my breath and blood,” he said, speaking in a strange, almost stilted tone utterly unlike him. His hand stroked up over her chest to caress her throat. “I am your air, your heart. I drink water from your hands. You bare your back to me.” He spoke softer now, but with growing intensity, the words vibrating from his chest-plate to her breast. “Your voice is the secret sounding of my name. I give my unprotected skin to your touch. I am always in you. You are always with me.”

Oddly, none of that seemed like too much for a few months and two nights. She put her arms around him as he climbed onto the bed and lay tensely atop her, looking down. Their hands met and twined briefly; she found the seams along his shoulders to stroke, and he combed his long fingers through her hair. That was all for several silent minutes.

“I must copulate with you now,” he said.

Sarah giggled, blushing right to her bones, and then felt the press of his belly-plates swelling against her stomach. Not all the way apart, not yet, but there was a real urgency in his eyes. She touched his shoulder-joints again and he chirred raggedly, brushing his feathery claspers against her.

“Do I hurt you when we copulate this way?” he asked.

She bit her lip, avoided the question. “I like to see your face.”

“Yes,” he said, relaxing. His belly-plates pushed at her again. He shifted back; she felt the solid pressure of his curved member pressing on her next, insistent and unfeeling as it dug at her soft thigh. Still, he hesitated.

She started to wriggle out of the rest of her clothes. He stopped her.

“Do I…” Awkward again, he moved his hand back to her breast and lightly rubbed up and down. “Do I give you sexual pleasure?”

“I can’t believe you have to ask that. More than I ever thought possible with anyone.” She faltered, her smile fading. “Do I?”

“Even when we do not touch,” he assured her, and pulled the sheet up over their heads.

After that, there were very few words, apart from, “Ow ow ow! Watch the spikes! Watch the—okay, okay, that’s good…oh, that’s so good…” and soft laughter, chirrs, sighs, humming, and finally, sleep.

* * *

Sanford was awakened too early by the weight of a small body bouncing off the foot of the bed. He sat up fast and that same small body smacked loudly into his chest-plate, knocking him flat again.

“I heard a noise,” T’aki said, burrowing violently under the sheets.

Then Sanford heard it and how he could have heard it once and slept through it could not be fathomed, for it was a bellow like nothing he had ever heard. Like an angry human, a roll of thunder, and truck’s horn all at once, it raised the hairs over his ear.

“What the hell is that?” Sarah asked sleepily, pushing herself onto her elbows.

“It’s right outside,” shivered T’aki.

Sanford got up with his son’s hands pulling at him. He went very cautiously to the window, twitched aside one finger’s breadth of curtain and risked a glance from behind the wall.

Among the trees of the forest, midway between the water and this building, stood a monstrous creature. Taller than a cow and built for battle, with great shovel-shaped horns edged in points, it swung its head among the low branches, then arched its neck and roared again.

“Oh wow,” breathed Sarah, staring boldly from her side of the window. She was smiling.

“Is it dangerous?”

“Not to us in here.”

“Is it a dog?” T’aki asked from under the sheet.

“No, honey. It’s called a moose. I’ve never seen one in person before,” she added, moving even closer to the glass. “So to speak.”

The monster raked its horns over a tree trunk and roared a third time.

“Why is it doing that?” T’aki wailed.

“He’s trying to attract a mate,” said Sarah.

Sanford touched her arm, wanting her away from the glass and out of sight, should the creature look around.

She smiled at him. “Relax, I’m off the market.” But she came away from the window. Not to return to bed, he saw, but to finish dressing.

He looked out the window again and saw the sun only just past its heights. He scraped his palps disapprovingly.

“I know, I know. But I feel better, I do. I just…need to get there, Sanford. It’s like an itch—er, like a…like a…” She gave up and turned to him, half-dressed and crookedly smiling. “You can put me in that bed, but I promise you I won’t sleep.”

Did she think that was a threat? He chirred and fanned his palps, then chuckled to see her cheeks turn a brilliant pink.

In that selfsame bed, T’aki giggled.

“I want to go,” she said, coming to touch him. “Please. I want to get there. I want to see Kate and get out of that big, clunky,
obvious
van. I want to get to California. You could be on your ship
tomorrow
. I need to see you safe, Sanford. Bed is wonderful…but I need to see you safe.”