Heat

Tagen straightened under the spray of cool water and picked up the human’s soap. He washed thoroughly, scouring life back into his body with the thing she called a ‘sponge’ and replacing the hot stink of his flesh with something flowery and feminine. He cleaned his hair with a viscous green fluid that, despite its unhealthy appearance, stripped the sweat and grime from his hair with admirable speed. Finally, Tagen’s long years aboard-ship began to prickle at him, reminding him unreasonably that there was only so much water and it would all have to be recycled before the crew could bathe again tomorrow, and as illogical as the feeling was, he still had to obey it.

Tagen shut off the flow of water and dried himself briskly with one of the human’s white towels, then tied it around his waist for modesty’s sake as he exited the shower stall. He took the canister and the device the human had indicated to be a shaver with him and stood in front of the mirror.

Good so far, but now what? The shaver was nothing but a triple-row of naked blades partly-sheathed in some synthetic material, with a handle too small for him to comfortably use. The canister did nothing; he shook it, brought it to his face, touched it to the shaver, and even tried speaking to it in the event it were voice-operated, but there was no response. Hesitantly, knowing he was using the thing wrong, Tagen put the canister down and gingerly touched the shaver to his face.

He cut himself immediately.

“Shu-ra,” he muttered, pressing a fingertip to the wound. Inexplicably, his anger targeted vey Venekus, the far-distant Human Studies scientist, who had not only inundated him with badly-outdated information, he also had not packed a shaver in the supply pack he’d sent off with Tagen. He peered closely at the shaver, tried turning it the other way, and promptly gouged himself another hole as he attempted to neaten his face. “Shu-ra!”

“Okay, it’s all ready. Oh.” The human stood in the doorway, still pink in the face as she looked at him. “Sorry. Your bed’s ready anytime you want it. I’ll go now.”

“Wait.” Tagen held out the shaver, defeated and disgusted by his helplessness. He supposed there was not much wisdom in giving her something that could cut, but the blades were small and so was she. It would take no little effort for her to do him any real damage. “Show me. Please.”

Daria hesitated, but did take the shaver. “It’s not really that complicated,” she said, picking up the canister he had been forced to disregard. “But I guess there’s a certain amount of familiarity that comes into play. Sit down so I can reach.”

Tagen lowered himself onto the side of the shower’s short wall and tipped his head back, offering his jaw to her.

She pressed a button on the top of the canister and filled her palm with clear, blue gel. This she rubbed into a lather and used it to paint his lower face. “Just relax,” she murmured, and drew the shaver down his cheek. She rinsed the blades in the sink and came back to him, smiling. “I never thought aliens would need to shave,” she said.

What an odd thing to think.

“Why not?” he asked, clenching his jaw to keep it still.

“I don’t know,” she said, rolling one shoulder. “I guess it’s because it seems like such a human thing to do.”

“You think humans alone have hair?”

“Well…sort of.” She finished one half of his face and moved around to the other side of him to continue. “We have…stories, I guess you’d say, about aliens. Made-up ones, you know, or at least, they’re supposed to be. So everyone knows what an alien is supposed to look like, even though no one really believes in them. And they’re supposed to be little, grey, hairless guys with huge heads and no noses.” She laughed. “You don’t look much like one.”

Sounded like a So-Quaal drone to him, but he refrained from saying so. Contact with a Jotan was enough of an adjustment for her. He did not need to further complicate her reality.

“What does E’Var look like?” she asked.

“I do not know.”

She finished with the shaver and handed him a small towel, disbelief etched all across her face. “You don’t know? How do you expect to find him then?”

“I expect,” Tagen said dryly, “that he will be the only other Jotan on Earth.”

She blinked, comically surprised, and then eased into a smile. “Yeah. Obviously. That would make sense all right.”

Tagen cleaned the foam from his face, stroked the smoothness of his jaw experimentally, and smiled. He felt so much better, less threadbare and lost.

“So that’s what you are, huh? A…Jotan?”

“Yes.”

“What’s your planet’s name?”

He regarded her closely, and said, “Jota,” in a tone that was half-question.

She looked faintly insulted. “Like I’m supposed to know that? Hey, I’m a human, but the planet’s name is not Hum.”

“I know.” He stood up. “I always thought that very strange. And when you do not call your planet Earth, you call it Terra, Tor, Chikyuu, Di, Aard, Jord. You call yourself human, but you are also me

“I’ll be sure to pass that on to my congressman.”

Tagen didn’t know the word, but it sounded like sarcasm. He changed the subject. “I do not expect this, but I must ask. Do you have any…” Vocabulary stopped him. He bent and took his soiled uniform and held it up before her questioningly.

She stared at the clothes, her expression ru

“I might,” she said.

So much for his ability to read human expression.

“In the meantime, I can wash these for you,” she added, reaching out for them. “Gosh, I hope they don’t shrink.”

Tagen removed his holsters and guns, and gave the rest of the uniform into her hands. The sight of his weapons halted her muttering examination of his clothes and when she looked up again, she was pale and subdued.

“Let me look around and see if Dan left anything you can wear. You’re kind of huge, so…” She rolled her shoulder in that curiously evocative gesture, suggesting the fates alone would provide.

He mimicked it, and she smiled faintly.

“If nothing else, I can order something. But of course, I’ll need to be able to open the door when the UPS guy comes.”

She had lapsed back into babble and the clarifying effects of the cool shower had faded. Tagen tried to lock his jaws against a yawn, but the human noticed.

“Sorry,” she said. “You’re exhausted. I’ll take care of these. You go to bed. And don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere.”

He chose to believe her. Whether motivated by trust or weariness, he nodded and moved past her and into the hall. He went into the room of holding, still crammed full of crates and swimming with disturbed dust. She had transformed the large seating place into a bed, and it looked almost long enough to allow him to fully sprawl.

Tagen shut the door and pulled the towel free of his waist. He slung his gunbelt over the back of an unused chair piled tall with crates and sat down on the bed. It was very soft and lumpy, but the bedding was light and cool and clean. He lay back and stretched, feeling every muscle groaning in protest, before rolling onto his side.

He was asleep almost at once.

OceanofPDF.com