Discovery (7 page)

“You’re very sad.” Her lips moved against his fingers. She didn’t move otherwise, not wanting to break the physical contact with him. Her empathic talent relied so much on touch. “Something happened to make you angry and sad, didn’t it? What happened to make you hurt so much inside? I wish I could help.”

“Shh,” he said, putting the fingers of his other hand to his mouth. And she understood.

He nodded to her right leg. “Your leg?” he queried.

So far, that and “backpack” seemed the only bit of her language he’d managed to grasp. But he had amazing recall, and she was impressed. Povre felt disappointed when his hand went back to his side.

“Yes, my leg hurts,” she admitted. “They deactivated my equipment. None of it works any more or I would have healed that injury hours ago. I’m sure your leg is hurt more than mine. Mine will get better after a sun-round of rest. As for you, I’m not sure how fast your species heals.”

The hand that had touched her so gently went to his chest.

“K’nt,” he said. He pointed to her, eyebrows raised. “Uu?”

Povre remained perfectly still and considered his action. Was this the name for his chest? Maybe this was what he was called. Or the name for his species.

What to do? Maybe he spoke of the pain she felt, the emotional pain, centered there. She didn’t know how to respond, so she stood still and silent, waiting.

~~

“Kent,” Kent repeated, pointing to himself. “Aken’or. Backpack.” He indicated his backpack. “Ine’mak. My leg.” He touched his leg. “En’mak. Your leg.” Pointed to hers. Once more, he touched his chest. “Ine name is Kent. En name?” It was the best he could do, and he hoped this would work.

The sudden bright smile she gave nearly blinded him. “Povresle.” She pointed to herself. “J’kam Povre.”

Kent grinned in triumph. Yes. “Your name is Poh-vray-slee?” He struggled with the inflection.

“Povre,” she said firmly, going with the shorter form.

He nodded. “Poh-vray. My name is Kent.”

“K’nt.”

He was relieved to understand the smiling expression meant the same to her as it did to him. Those tilted purple eyes swept over the camp and then came back to him. And then, as he had done, she gestured toward or touched each thing she named, using English words. She struggled with vowels and consonants, almost growling some of them, but from what he heard of her language, some of the sounds she was having the most trouble were completely…alien to her.

“Laygh. Your laygh. My laygh. Your baghp…baa…back-pack. Your name is K’nt.” She tapped his chest lightly with her longest finger. “My name is Povre.”

“Good.” Kent laughed, delighted. He saw a fresh difference in her instantly, heard a surprisingly deep sort of chuckle from her in return.

“K’nt,” Povre said. She tilted her face back to look at him through those impossibly long lashes and smiled.

He gestured back toward his camp. “Stay, Povre.”

She looked upset and started backing away.

“Please.” He hoped his facial expression would be enough to get the point across. “Don’t go. Not yet. You’re hurt, and lost. I’m hurt, but at least I know where I am, and my camp is right here. Stay, Povre.” He moved to close the gap she’d made between them. He wobbled on his bad leg and hissed.

She stepped closer again, slid an arm around his waist to steady him. He did the same to her, just in case she lost her balance, too.

“We make a fine pair,” he said wryly.

“Povre stay,” she said.

Kent started to laugh. He couldn’t help it. The alien looked up at him, her initial expression of alarm phasing into confusion, then understanding.

* * * * *

HIS GUEST SAT OBEDIANTLY on the Therma-Rest pad while Kent started a fire. Every few moments another bubble of laughter would rise up, and he shook with the effort to keep them quiet. The situation couldn’t be more ludicrous. Here he was, in a wilderness area ten miles as the crow flew from a thriving metropolis, with an alien. And he felt completely normal. Well, at least now he did.

“Povre,” he said, getting her attention back on him instead of the campfire. “Are you hungry?” Kent made the sign-language gesture, one of a few he remembered from a course long ago and from watching his deaf students. “Eat food? Drink?”

She shrugged. Not sure if she understood or not, Kent limped to retrieve his water jug and cooking gear from behind the tent. The water came from the river. He’d run it through his portable purifier just last evening.

All the while the alien sat as if rooted in place. Only her eyes were moving, now watching everything he did. He recognized the expression of fascinated concentration. Not from having seen it recently on any of his students’ faces, but having felt the same eagerness filling himself.

Pure, unadulterated scientific curiosity.

Yeah, if I were in those boots of hers, I’d appreciate the chance for the close-up view of the local fauna in their natural environment, too.

He swallowed back another chuckle, poured some water into his collapsible cup. “This is water. Just plain old water. Seeing as you’re here, breathing air without any problems, I’m going to take a wild guess and say you can drink water, too. I mean, if you needed to drink acid, you would have landed on Venus. Right? So, welcome to Earth, have a drink.” He held the cup up and pantomimed drinking, then offered it to her.

She moved one blue hand toward the cup. With the other, she went for something on her belt and Kent tried to act nonchalant, though his instincts ranged from running away to tackling her before she could pounce. With his luck, she’d pull out a weapon of sorts and reduce him to subatomic particles. After his behavior earlier, he couldn’t say he wouldn’t blame her if she did.

No. Whatever the gizmo in her hand was, it didn’t appear to be working. She set it aside, shrugged again, and took the cup.

Her examination was quite thorough. So much, in fact, that she caused the cup to collapse. The water spilled over her hand. With a soft eep, she dropped the cup and shook her hand it as if it had burned her.

“I should’ve shown you the cup and how it worked before filling it with water,” Kent said. “Sorry about that.” He grabbed the cup, wiped a few pine needles clinging to the outer surface onto his shirt, and twisted it opened. “Let’s try this again.”

This time she took it with care. She sniffed at the contents, and then cautiously poked her fingertip into the cold, clear liquid. Kent didn’t miss how she automatically reached for the gizmo on the ground again. Or the expression of loss when she stopped herself. It probably helped her safely determine if something was edible or not.

It didn’t deter her from continuing. She raised her hand to her mouth, and a dainty, pale lavender tongue licked her dampened fingertip. Kent was riveted. The color was just a bit darker than her lips. It wasn’t so startling or different. Just…maybe as if someone added more blue to the mix than human red. He found the action stirring up more than his imagination.

“Ah!” Povre exclaimed, startling Kent from his wandering thoughts. She beamed at him with such happy intensity he felt his knees start to buckle. He controlled himself enough to make it look as if he wanted to sit down on the pad next to her. And in actuality, he did, if only to get off his throbbing leg.

“Jasr’re ene,
K’nt.
P’lessh.”
She dipped her finger into the water, and repeated the word.
“P’lessh.”

The word sounded like water spilling from a faucet.
“P’lessh
. Water.”

“Wah-tur. Water.” She lowered her eyes and inclined her head just a bit.
“Jasr’re ene.”

That’s the same word she said after I got the rocks off her leg,
thought Kent. Gratitude, thanks. At least she was polite.
Are all aliens as polite as you? he wanted to ask. Or just the blue ones? Then again…are there more than just you blue ones?

Inspired, he reached for his notebook, a small loose-leaf binder of unlined paper encased in a waterproof zip lining. He’d start writing down the sounds she made. An English-Alien dictionary, yeah, that’s what it would be. And perhaps sketches would help the process, too. He sketched constantly, in his chosen field artistic talent was handy and always kept honed.

“Jasr’re ene
—thank you.” He spoke and wrote at the same time.

The tip of her tongue touched her upper teeth as she tried to get the “th” sound. “Th-th-th…ankh your?”

“Thank you,” repeated Kent. He didn’t know how he’d explain the difference between you and your, since, apparently, she’d already picked up on their similarity.

“Thank you, K’nt.”

“You’re welcome,” said Kent, pleased. He drew the simple configuration of oxygen and hydrogen atoms that formed a water molecule, and a jolt of excitement raced through him when she, still watching, gave a little gasp of delight.

“Water, K’nt.
P’lessh.”
The tip of her first finger, ending in a very short, thick nail, tapped the rendering on the paper.

Their eyes met and they smiled in unison. Then, her bright eyes remaining locked with his, Povre lifted the cup and sipped.

He wrote all the other words they had learned and then showed her some other drawings he’d made, of local animals, the ground squirrels, the elk, the mule deer, bald eagles. She hung over his arm. Her eager drive to learn was so tangible Kent thought he could squeeze handfuls of it from the air surrounding them.

“We’re definitely two of a kind,” he told her. Her thirst for discovery was as insatiable as his.

Soon they sprawled on the ground, side-by-side, like two children over a coloring book. In a matter of hours, they’d covered basic needs and progressed to numbers—holding out fingers and making lines, speaking counting words in both languages. Once in a while, she’d take the pencil from him and add to or make another drawing. Kent drew a rough outline of Earth, showing North America and their present approximate location. He added a rendition of a communications satellite and with words and lines asked why she couldn’t call somehow to get picked up.

Povre showed him another little device from her belt and made as if to throw it aside.

“Broken? It doesn’t function?”

Her forlorn look answered his question.

His belly interrupted the lesson. Emitting a loud growl from the very depths, it made him stop short and her sit up straight. Then he started to laugh and after a moment, she did too, sort of. He found that low chuckle made in her throat extremely sexy. Still laughing, Kent rolled to his back.

He choked on his next chuckle when with a butterfly-light pressure she touched his stomach. He felt her even through the puffy layer of his vest, jacket, and shirt.

“K’nt
u’gen mnam.”
Her forehead wrinkled, lifting her long shaggy bangs. “Hungry.”

“Yes.”

He expected the little tingle when she touched the fingers of the same hand to his lips.
“Ch’anok ket.
Food eat.”

He already knew she was some sort of scientist, but Lord, what intelligence. Amazement and respect blossomed inside. He sat up. Startled, she dropped her hand.

“It’s okay,” Kent said, calming her. His compulsion to touch her in return, for something more than a lesson in communications, matched his other feelings.

He could get used to the blue fur. His fingers itched to touch the silky fine hairs. Before he realized it, his hand reached to her cheek. Povre leaned into his touch, trusting, turning her face just a bit and closing her eyes. She had lashes that swept clear to her cheekbones. Her shaggy mane of black hair was a soft as mink, and crackled with slight static as he let his fingers explore the texture. When he went to curl an errant strand behind the place her ears should be, Kent got another shock.

Oh, she had ears all right. But they weren’t human ears. Not even Mr. Spock ears. They were more like little cat ears. And they moved, together or independently, flickering back and forth to catch every sound, especially the startled breath Kent took. Both of those adorable blue ears tilted forward, aiming at him. Her eyes opened, her face a question:
Did I do something wrong?

“You’re beautiful,” said Kent softly, and meant it. He wanted to know what those parts of her he couldn’t see looked like…If her species and his could…

Staring into those soft, open eyes of deep amethyst, damned if he couldn’t summon up all his hard-argued reasons for swearing off females. Not a single one.

Povre returned his exploration. Her fingers traced along his stubbled jaw. By the way her touch went from one area to the other, he could tell she was making mental comparisons. Between what? His species and hers? The diversity in texture between the short, rough facial hair and the soft head hair?

“What are you, Povre? Why are you here? Are there more like you?”

Worry flashed through him. Thoughts of UFOs and top-secret files, lurid pictures of mummified or dead aliens splashed on supermarket tabloids. Alien abductions…

If she wanted to abduct me she’d have done that already. And if she’s not alone, are they watching us?
His gaze quickly skimmed the perimeter of the camp. No, he had the definite impression she was alone. So why was she alone? Was she abandoned as some punishment? Was she actually some sort of alien criminal?