Текст книги "Heat"

Автор книги: R. Lee Smith

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 54 страниц)

Daria came and sat beside him, and immediately, all thought of the show’s improbabilities went completely out of his mind. Tagen didn’t look at her. He moved no muscle at all apart from what it took to continue breathing. But he was aware of her. He felt her; the space she occupied seared his entire left side. Her scent dug into all his senses. Female. Very female.

And all at once, Tagen had an epiphany, his very first.

He wanted her. He wanted not just a willing female for a restless bout of sexplay, he wanted her. He wanted Daria Cleavon.

He didn’t know why. She was human. That alone should have been reason enough not to want her. But the more time he spent in her home, the fewer their differences seemed to matter. And no, she was not the sort of female he normally found attractive, but that was all right, too. He was in the unique position of holding power and authority over a female and he found it very arousing.

Tagen’s claws dug in at his knee where he forced his hand to casually rest. The pain was centering, reminding him in no uncertain terms that if he should make an overture, even if he knew how, he would not be welcome.

The tee-vee program chose that precise moment to cut to a scene of the two humans naked, writhing in a swaddle of sheets and sweat-damp limbs.

Tagen continued to stare without changing expression, but he was intensely aware of Daria at his side and of her sudden stillness.

The male’s hands moved up the female’s undulating body, gripping her breasts before consuming her in a kiss. This was how humans mated. This was how Daria would move beneath him. These were the sounds she would make. This—

Tagen suddenly pulled in a breath, his mind closing to the visual and opening on reality.

Musk. Mating musk. Daria, here beside him, neither touching nor looking at him, but thinking of him, perhaps. Wanting him, as he wanted her.

Why, damn her, why would she not advance? Why would she not turn to him, speak to him, tell him what she wanted? He did not dare to move first. Even if every instinct went against taking the first step when a female had not indicated approval, he could not risk antagonizing her. He could not withstand the flood of fear in her eyes, not now, not when he wanted her so completely.

In programs such as this, a female frequently announced her willingness to mate with a touch. Daria was in comfortable reach. Her hand could come to his knee so easily. So easily.

On the screen, the female was crying out aloud at the height of her pleasure and the male groaned and sank down slow atop her. Daria’s mating musk grew stronger, and suddenly, Tagen could not sit quietly and pretend none of this mattered. He turned to her, his stomach tightening apprehensively, and readied himself to put his hand on her.

She stood up fast. It was perhaps unfair to say she sprang away, but neither was it wholly inaccurate. She went rapidly around the low table to the foot of the stairs and looked back at him.

He was bitterly prepared for fear, but it was not there. Her eyes were clear. Uncertain and deeply unnerved, but also intense and yes, desirous.

Tagen stood up.

“Good night,” she said. She turned away and went quickly up the stairs and into her room. The door shut resoundingly.

Tagen was on the second stair before he could fully comprehend that he had left the couch. He stopped there, his claws gouging at the banister, knowing that if he moved up another step, it would end with him in her room again, and this time, gods help him, he would have her. And that he would not do. When she was ready, she would ask him. He wanted her, but more even than that, he wanted her to want him.

Tagen turned around and stalked away from her, out the front door and into the warm night air. He walked fast, all the way to the edge of the wood, but could not avoid the golden light spilling from her window and could not clear his senses of the intoxication of her musk. And now…now he didn’t even want to.

Tagen leaned his back against the pillaring support of a tree and unfastened his breeches. He closed his hand around his shaft, his eyes sliding shut, and thrust into his fist. Slowly, slowly. He would have to be careful with her, gentle. She was so fragile, so small (his hand tightened), but he would be gentle. Like the human males on the late-hour video feeds, he would show her tenderness and care. And like the females, she would respond with cries, with moans. She would hold him against her. She would find her pleasure again and again before him.

Tagen locked his voice behind clenched jaws as he erupted out into the night.

Better, he thought, catching his breath and slowing his racing heart. At least it was acknowledged and out of his system. Maybe now he would be able to concentrate.

He glanced up at the house as he fastened his breeches again, and saw the light in Daria’s room switch off.

She was still awake. He could go to her right now, before she slept. He could knock. If she said nothing, he would know what it meant. But she might admit him. He had to do something.

‘If I want you in my room, I’ll leave the door open.’ The memory of her voice was as clear in his mind as if she were directly behind him.

He would not knock. When she was ready, she would invite him.

He would wait.

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter Thirteen

Tagen woke up with no suppressants. He looked anyway, staring for a long time into the empty bottle, punishing himself with the sight of it while Earth’s sun rose. He could feel the temperature rising, could actually feel it. Already.

He could only hide in the shower for so long. The water was cool, but the damp and the heat of the room began muggy and became smothering very soon. The rest of the house may be as hot, but least it was drier.

Tagen watched the media briefings as long as he could stand to. It was hot, and the images of persistent violence got in under his skin and stung at him like salt. He felt restless and irritable and eventually, he just had to get away from it all.

He went outside. He supposed it was hotter in full sun, but there was a breeze now and then and the air was free of the ever-present sting of disinfectants that clung to Daria’s home. He paced around the shaded side of the house, telling himself he was contemplating E’Var’s location, but in truth unable to concentrate or even form a coherent thought. He was walking just to walk, and all the while, the shade shrank and the sun burned down.

At last, he permitted himself to be defeated and he went to the kitchen for iced water. He paced rapidly around the kitchen as he drank, and then sat down at the table in the corner to chew the ice. There, exhaustion fell in on him all at once, leadening his limbs and stealing the breath from his lungs. He closed his eyes, trying to shut out heat along with light. It was psychological, all of it. He could not go into Heat so soon.

He wanted to shoot something. Not out of malice. Not even to do harm, and certainly not to a living thing. But just to have weight and resistance in his killing hand, to hear the whine of fire and see something break and burn. To have damage that was physical, damn it all. To have something real before him and see it shatter. To exorcize his mood with effects he could see.

The heat. Damn this hell-shat heat!

“I’ve been looking for you all over!”

Tagen flinched and snarled hard, and Daria’s strident voice cut itself off while the last word still hung in the air. He dragged his eyes open and glanced around, knowing he should apologize, but unable to muster the motivation. She was standing in the doorway behind him, looking nervous.

“Where have you been?” she asked timidly.

“Out.” He glared into his glass. Some of the ice had already melted. He drank.

Daria continued to stand and watch him. The longer she did so, the more her sweat seemed to permeate the air.

He didn’t feel like ignoring her any more than he felt like watching the tee-vee. He raised his head and stared back at her, letting his eyes drink in what his nostrils could scent—a female, young and healthy. What matter that she was alien? She was here.

Daria stepped back under the directness of his gaze and her face first lost color and then gained it back in shades of pink. “Are you okay?” she asked.

Was he okay? Hmmm.

“Do you have a headache?”

“No.”

“Well…” She shivered and then sparked with that fear-born anger and stalked over to the sink. “Well then, stop staring at me.”

Tagen chewed on ice, letting his eyes trail down her narrow back to the sensual swell of her hocks.

“While you were out, I was busy,” she announced, “trying to find your guy on the internet.”

Tagen said nothing. She glanced back as if to determine he was still there, still listening, and when she saw his steady gaze, she flustered. “What did you find?” he asked, forestalling her.

“F-find what?” She blinked rapidly and then cut her eyes at the computer and rallied. “Nothing,” she said, and somehow made it an accusation. “I found a whole lot of it, too. You know what? I don’t think your guy’s on Earth.”

“Hm.”

“So you can leave,” she said, and set her jaw against him.

He found the look, unusually assertive for her, intensely arousing.

The pink of her cheeks darkened to red. She turned her back on him. “You can’t live here,” she said curtly. “Your guy is dead. Go home.”

“No.”

She went rigid so suddenly, so completely, that it was as if she’d had been shot. The muscles of her arms stood out in sharp relief, but she did not face him. Tagen realized that she thought he was going to come for her. She expected him to come for her right now, right here in the kitchen, and…and do what, exactly? Oh, he knew what he wanted to do, but what did she imagine?

The same thing, probably. For a long, black moment, Tagen was tempted to do it. He would stand up and cross the room, just to see what she would do. She would panic, or perhaps she would not. Perhaps, in the extremity of her expectations and terror, she would instead submit.

Tagen raised a hand hooked into claws and held it before his face, shaking with the urge to strike out, even at himself. Pain would be welcome respite from this damned maddening irritation. When it passed at last, it took all the strength from his body with it.

He slumped forward, heavy and exhausted, and stared down at the tabletop. “He is here,” he said. “I know he is here.”

“Look, I just don’t know what else to do.” Daria shook herself back to life and started running water into the sink so that she could scrub her spotless countertops. “I’ve been watching the news and I’m just not seeing some big scary serial killer stalking the west coast.”

Tagen rubbed at his temples, trying to stave off the headache he sensed coming before it could get a claw-hold in him. Conversation with Daria was something to alleviate the long hours of Earth’s day when he had nothing else to occupy himself with, but there were times, and this was one of them, when it could be more exhausting than it was worth. Beneath her tones of feigned indifference he could hear her uncertainty, her enigmatic fear. She wanted guarantees, and he had none to give her.

“Would you?” he asked simply. “Would the people of your world truly announce such a thing if they had no suspects?”

That seemed to stump her, but only for a second. “There’d still be something,” she insisted. “At the very least, there’d be missing-person alerts all over the place. Do you know what made the lead report in the morning news show today, Tagen? Lucky, the three-legged cat, finding a new home at the animal shelter. They don’t report stuff like that if people are dying!”

Tagen merely looked at her. He could see the precise instant when she remembered that he watched the media feeds as well, and therefore knew exactly how many humans were dying all over this hot, miserable planet.

Daria flushed and resumed cleaning. “Okay, people die. People die every day. I’m just saying there’s nothing unusual about the way we’re doing it these days. Tagen, are you sure this guy landed where you think he did?”

Tagen bared his teeth at his human’s back, and then scowled at the table top. Leave it to Daria to voice that fear that had been gnawing at his own heart all this while. “No,” he said. “Only that this is where the ship he drove came through Earth’s outer field. It is possible he thought to elude pursuit by seeking out another site to land, but I prefer to think he did not. E’Var thinks in straight lines. I want to believe he pilots in them as well.”

“You are all kinds of warm and comforting, you know that?” Daria shook her head, oblivious to the bemused look Tagen sent her way. “So, let’s say you’re right and he is somewhere close by. Then you need to come to terms with the fact that he is not the ruthless killer you think he is. Okay? Wherever the hell he is, he’s not slaughtering people at random.”

“He is.” Tagen was beginning to dislike the sound of his voice; he sounded tired and defeated. “He is just not being caught at it, and I cannot think why.”

“Maybe he’s lying low.”

He glanced at her from the corner of his eye, beneath the cover of his own loose fall of hair. She had turned around and was peering at him, searching his total lack of reaction for clues. She still persisted in the belief that he knew more than he was telling. He did, but damn her for knowing it. His headache slid a few degrees further towards reality.

Daria twisted one side of her mouth, raising her cleaning cloth and clutching it before her like a shield. “Maybe he’s not killing people because he knows you’re looking for him.”

“I say again, he is killing people.” Tagen lifted his head away from his hands and splayed them for her. “I do not know how he is escaping notice, but it is not through subtlety on the part of Kanetus E’Var. I trust him to choose his victims deliberately and to hide them carefully when he is done. Perhaps your…”

He was halted first by his incomplete vocabulary, and then by his common sense, which told him that the best way to keep his human host in good humor was perhaps not to insult her planetary defense forces. Tagen’s silence drew out and he glared frustration at the table.

“My what?” Daria asked. She had that look again, that tight ready-for-anger look that pinched her brows and made a hard line of her mouth.

“I do not know the word.” And he was beginning to wish he’d never joined in the conversation.

“What does it do?” she pressed.

“I do not know that word, either.” He shook his head, mostly for his own benefit, mentally chastising himself for ever starting down this line of thought. He was going to have to give her some sort of answer and she was going to want to pin his hide up with nails when she heard it. “Humans…seeking others…as I am seeking E’Var.”

“Cops, you mean? Detectives?” She regarded him suspiciously. “You can’t possibly watch as much Law & Order as you do without knowing those words.”

“Very well.” Tagen gave her a hard stare. “Tell me the word for a detective who watches over your planet and prevents alien invasion.”

Daria swallowed and dropped her eyes.

“Because unless you have such a force, the police of your world may not be able to adequately…”

She let him hunt for human speech for several seconds as her hands twisted her cleaning cloth. “You’d better not be trying to say ‘investigate’,” she said at last, in flat, hard tones. “There’s nothing wrong with Earth cops.”

“I did not mean to imply otherwise.”

“It sure sounded like you were. It sounded like you were trying to hold Earth police responsible for your inability to catch your criminal.”

Tagen closed his eyes and rubbed them some more. He couldn’t see any way out of the argument and he was too damned tired to try. “If I offend you, I apologize. I would have more tact if I knew more speech.”

Daria scrubbed at the counters for a few frigid minutes and when she ran out of surface space, she swung around again and Tagen braced himself for a new assault.

It never came.

He stole a glance at her and found her frowning, not with irritation, but concern. With his hands still at his temple and his hair hiding his movements, Tagen took discrete stock of himself. He could see his chest, bared to the waist, pale and shimmering with a thin veil of sweat. So it wasn’t his imagination, after all. The last of the suppressants had left his system already.

Well, hell.

Daria came a small step towards him, half-raised one hand, and paused there. “Are you okay?”

Tagen grunted.

“Do you want a soda? Or some more ice water?” She sounded frightened.

Tagen turned his head just enough to roll one eye at her. She looked frightened, too. He sighed, returned to his previous position. “Anything,” he said. “Thank you.”

She popped out half a dozen ice cubes and poured cold water over them. “What’s the matter?” she asked timidly, as she brought it to the table.

Tagen sighed again as he closed his hand around the tumbler. For the first time, he considered the merits in a good, old-fashioned lie. He supposed he didn’t really know the human well enough to say for sure how she would react to a Jotan biology lesson, even if he had the means of lecturing her, but he suspected it wouldn’t be with overwhelming delight and acceptance, and he was too damned tired to handle her below-surface hostility. He settled for a half-truth.

“It is the heat,” he said finally. “There is nothing you can do, and I will endure.”

She only stood there, chewing her lip, with that look she sometimes got when she believed he was not being completely honest with her. “Tagen…it’s been hotter before today…and you look pretty bad right now.”

“It is the heat,” he said again, clenching his jaw. Of all the humans on this miserable planet, he had to find one with reasonably good powers of detection. “I’ve been taking something to help, but there is no more and now I will have to endure it.”

“Are you sick?”

“No.” But he hesitated before he said it, and Daria noticed, as Daria always did.

“Are you?” she demanded, alarmed. “Are you dying?”

“No!” He started to bare his teeth at her, drank his water instead. It helped a little, and he forced himself back into calm before he continued. “I will not die of it. It is not possible to die of it. I will be uncomfortable, but I will endure.” He thought a little, and smiled thinly. “And take grim comfort from the knowledge that E’Var must suffer as I do.”

He began to drink again, but paused as a new thought occurred. Curse Daria’s closeness to him; her pessimism was having an evil effect on him. “E’Var is a chemist,” he murmured, unaware he spoke aloud. “So perhaps he will not suffer after all.”

“A chemist?” Daria echoed, and he started and looked into her narrow, suspicious eyes. “You came all this way after a rogue chemist? You told me he was killing people!”

“He is.” Tagen drank again, eyed the cubes in the empty glass, and rose to add more water. “He is using your people to make his chemicals.”

She was still staring at him when he returned to the table, and he sat down and drank, watching comprehension sink into her eyes. She was naive at times, his Daria, and at times almost scarily fixated upon the darker motivations of both their kinds, but she was not stupid.

“You don’t mean chemist,” she said slowly. “You mean he’s making drugs. He’s using people to make drugs.”

“Yes.” He did not know the word, but he trusted to her definition.

Her mouth worked in silence for a few seconds, and then she slammed both hands down on the table and shouted, “How can you just sit there? Why aren’t you out catching this guy?”

Irritation drove a thin, hot spike down through his body. “How do you suggest I go about it?”

“The old-fashioned Earth way, asshole! Just look for him!”

Tagen felt his patience slip. “I am looking. And I will find him.”

“But only if he leaves a bunch of bodies behind him. I mean, that is your big plan, right? Just wait for him to kill a busload of nuns and you don’t even give a damn!” She worked herself up into a good seethe while Tagen mentally recited the Jotan alphabet backwards. He’d made it to leth when she exploded. “If he were killing your people, you’d call him a murderer and he’d be goddamn well caught by now, but no! He’s here on backwater Earth, so he can butcher humans all he wants and you send one fucking narc because that makes him just a drug dealer!”

“You humans have drugs and the men who make them, yes?”

“It is completely different!” she hissed.

Headache and Heat crept towards each other from the polar points of his body. “I see.”

“People don’t die when humans make drugs.”

“No? Earth has only peaceful chemists? The men who use the drugs do only kind deeds while seeking them?”

“That’s different, goddammit! I’m talking about people killing people just to make it, and I’m talking about you thinking I wouldn’t even need to know!”

Naturally. He knew this would become his fault at some point. “I did not design the drug or the means of its manufacture. I did not train Kanetus to hunt humans and kill them for Vahst. I did not help him to kill his guards and take his ship and give him the tools he needed to come to Earth and make his drug.” Tagen’s voice was rising. He heard it happening, and he knew exactly what words were going to come next, and he was utterly incapable of stopping himself. “Humans kill each other for reasons and in numbers I cannot imagine. It never occurred to me to think you might notice what small percentage E’Var took in his work.”

She rocked back and then glared at him. “That’s what you thought, huh?”

“And I think I was correct to do so, as you sit there and tell me you have not seen…how did you put it…? Anything unusual about the way your kind is dying. E’Var is not killing busloads of nuns. He is clever enough to kill only those your kind never notices anyway. He is harvesting that vast wash of unnoticed and unimportant throw-away humans of which you, Lindaria Cleavon, are damned well one, and if you cannot tell where he is, you can hardly expect me—”

She slapped him, not hard, but fast enough that he never saw it coming, much less have time to block her. It made a sound that, for just an instant, he thought might be his own restraint snapping. The urge to knock the table across the little room and seize her by the throat was so strong that he could actually feel the faint resistance of her flesh in his grip.

Tagen closed his eyes. Took a breath. Took another. Opened them and said, “I am going to bed. I am sorry you think badly of me. Perhaps on your world, your police are allowed to set their own policy, choose the criminals they seek when and how they wish it, but that is not the way of things on Jota.”

He stalked from the kitchen, leaving Daria alone at the table to watch his ice cubes melt.

*

Daylight and back on the road. Kane dozed, riding in the passenger seat of the groundcar with his hat pulled low over his eyes. Raven was an exhausting companion when she was drugged. He hadn’t done much sleeping the last few days.

No, not much. He should really be more irritable, but it was hard to work up a good steam with so many fond memories.

A smile tugged at the corners of his lips even now. He had no idea how much Raven remembered of her lying-in. Every so often, he’d catch a puzzled kind of expression dashing across her face, but she never gave him a clue as to what her thoughts were. Too bad. She was fair enough when she was free and sober, but she was a force of fucking nature when she was under the blanket of that painkiller. Kane had worked and reworked the combination of chemicals six times in the last four days, and he had yet to discover what had made her so merry…and mouthy. Gods, her mouth…

Never mind. Her mouth was good for plenty of other things, and she’d probably bite just because he told her to, anyway. Although…half the fun of it had come from her spontaneity. From her wanting to bite, and from the obvious pleasure she’d taken as she’d done it. Sure, she’d obey him if he gave her an order, but it wouldn’t be the same.

It’d be something, though. Fuck it, he’d tell her to bite.

“Oh shit.”

Kane turned toward Raven, but before he could ask what the trouble was, he felt the car lurch and then slow. The engines sputtered and cut out. Steam billowed from beneath the hull’s fore-panel and the smell of hot oil and rubber filled the interior.

Raven cranked the wheel, guiding the vehicle with apparent effort off the road and onto the soft side. The car ground to a halt there, hissing as it died. She stared straight ahead, pale and frightened-looking. Her jaw was tight, as if expecting a blow.

Kane drummed his fingers once on the top of his pack. “Trouble?” he asked mildly.

“I…I can’t fix cars.” She still didn’t look at him, and her hands on the steering wheel clenched white.

“Do you know what’s wrong with it?” Hell, he could have a look. Engines were engines.

“It’s the heat,” Raven said. “I probably ran out of radiator fluid or something.”

“Let’s have a look.” He took the keys from her by habit and got out. The fore-panel popped as he walked around front and it only took a second or two for him to figure out how to open it. The panel was hot as a hard fuck; Kane shrugged out of his long coat and wrapped it around his hand to touch it, and then studied the grimed interior of the groundcar’s guts.

Internal combustion engine, fuel accelerated and electrically supplemented. As straightforward as they came. Kane could see the problem. He didn’t know what it was called in human, but the coolant tank had run dry. He supposed they could refill it with water for a stop-gap, but they’d still have to wait for everything to cool down before he could touch it. Besides which, they had only one bottle of water between them in the car. He wasn’t sure that would be enough to even get them to a repair bay. Not to mention the fact that a mechanic would want to be paid.

Another groundcar pulled onto the roadside at Kane’s back as he considered the situation and a male voice called, “Need help?”

“Nope.” Kane slammed the fore-panel shut. “Shot to shit.” He turned around, unwinding his coat from his arm, and smiled at the human who had addressed him. The lone human. In a decent-looking groundcar. He strolled over. “Hi,” he said.

“Rotten day to have to walk fifteen miles into town,” the human remarked with a sun-ward glance.

“True.”

“I guess I could be persuaded to give you a ride for a few bucks.”

“I don’t have a few bucks.” Kane heard his groundcar’s door open and Raven’s footsteps crunching on gravel. He watched the human look past him as she approached. The human seemed a little unpinned by the addition of Raven, but he recovered quickly.

“Ah, what the hell.” The human gave a wave to the inside of his groundcar. “Hop in.”

Kane smiled wide and stepped back, catching Raven’s arm and towing her out of easy listening range. “Get my pack,” he said, and quietly added, “Sit with him and keep him distracted.”

“How distracted?” she asked, looking nervous. “Do…Do I have to…?”

“No, I’m going to kill him.” Kane paused and cocked his head at her, teasing. “Why, do you want to…?” He raised his eyebrows to emphasize the unspoken and snapped his teeth at her.

She recoiled so cutely that he couldn’t resist leaning in and nipping at her jaw. “Just distract him,” he said, and got into the car behind the human.

“That your girlfriend?” the human asked, watching Raven jog away.

“Just someone I picked up.”

“Really? Well. Some of that going around, I guess.”

Raven came moments later with his pack in hand and joined the driver in the front seat. “Hi,” she said.

“Well, hi.” The human started up his engines and pulled out onto the road. “So. Where you two headed?”

“West,” Kane said.

“San Francisco,” Raven added, tugging her skirt up a little higher. “At least, that was the plan. Now that the car’s dead, who knows? This isn’t the best hitching weather.”

“I hear ya.”

The humans chatted and Kane listened just closely enough to ascertain that Raven wasn’t slipping in any warnings. Mostly, he watched the driver in the console mirror, smiling whenever their eyes met.

“Well now, sounds like you’ve for sure got your problems,” the driver said, and Kane detected a faint strain beneath the casual tones. “Now, I could drop you in Tallahook easy enough. It’s right on my way, maybe fifteen miles. But I’m headed to Portland myself.”

“Really?” Raven glanced back at Kane.

“It’s not all the way for you folks,” the human continued, in that same too-hearty tone that spoke all kinds of warnings to one who was listening for it. “But it’s halfway at least, and you shouldn’t have any trouble catching a ride from there.”

“That’d be great,” Raven said.

Kane waited.

“So I’m thinking,” the human said carefully, and cleared his throat. “I’m thinking, what’s that worth to you?”

“We’re…kind of low on cash,” Raven said, sending swift glances in Kane’s direction.

“Did you have cash in mind?” Kane asked pleasantly.

The human uttered a self-effacing sort of laugh. “Well, no sir, I did not. But there’s still time for me to stop you off in Tallahook, if you’d rather. But I am offering to tote you a couple hundred miles for free.” He shrugged, still smiling, but plainly nervous. “I’ve got no diseases and I’m not a weirdo. I’ll even wear a condom if you will.”

“If—” Raven stuttered to a stop and then turned all the way around and stared at Kane.

Kane looked back at her. Something in the set of her eyes told him the driver had changed the game slightly.

“What do you say?” the human pressed. “We can send your girl here out to a movie and you and me…” He shrugged again, watching Kane closely in the console mirror.

Comprehension came home to Kane. He rubbed his jaw to hide the smile breaking free of him and when he was quite sure laughter wouldn’t leak into his voice, he said, “I’m going to have to insist my girl stay with me. Strange town, you understand.”

“If it don’t bother you, it don’t bother me,” the human said. He was relaxing, grinning in the way of a man who had made a blind leap and found solid ground instead of space beneath his feet.