“I guess your winters are a lot colder than ours, too.”

“I would not know, having never experienced one of Earth’s. One can only assume, since your summers are so hot for so long, your winters must be mild. In ancient times, Jota’s winter storms were of killing force.”

“Not anymore?” she asked. “What happened, global warming?”

“In a sense. Global climate control.”

“Gosh, that must be nice. Do you use it to keep your summers from getting too hot, too?”

“No,” he said, glancing wryly back at her. “For some unknowable reason, our government thinks it would be a good idea if we bred once in a while.” He paused to move the ladder to a new tree, and Daria followed after gathering the cut branches into a neat pile. “Humans don’t have a breeding season, do they?” he asked. He’d been wondering for some time.

“No, they—Hey, contractions! Way to go, Tagen!”

“Thank you. I have been studying very hard.”

“No, to answer your question, humans don’t have a breeding season,” she said, smiling. “I think a lot of babies get conceived in the winter, but that’s probably just because we get snowed in and get bored. Men are fertile all the time around here. And women become fertile once a month for about a week at a time.”

“Truly? So often? Do you know when you are fertile?”

“Not exactly, but we know right afterwards when we’re not, so we can kind of guess if we keep track.” Her face drained suddenly of color and she jerked back, her hands flying to her belly. “Oh God!”

He took her fear at once and came off the ladder to console her. “No, no, Daria. It is not possible for our kinds to produce young.”

“How do you know?”

“Because…” He let his hands fall from her shoulders and looked up at the stars for strength, invisible behind their curtain of blue. “Because it has been tried,” he said, and sighed. “Daria, there are things I have not told you.”

“It’s not just the drug, is it?” Her voice was soft, numbed by understanding, but the anger he feared most did not come. Her fingers slipped through his and she came close against his arm. “He’s taking us back, isn’t he? He’s taking people.”

Tagen looked at her hand in his, her cunning little fingers, so slim and graceful. He looked into her eyes—green and blue and white—all the colors of her Earth.

“What does he do with them?” Daria asked.

“All that can be done,” he answered, as gently as possible. “He…and others like him…sell humans to become…I do not know the word. They are forced to work.”

“Slaves,” she said. Her gaze drifted from his, staring in horror at some empty point in space. “The word you’re looking for is slaves.”

“It is a crime,” he said. It was very important for him to make that distinction, and for her to understand it. “As serious in its way as murder. When we find them, the criminals are imprisoned for all their lives. The humans are…removed.”

“But you don’t bring them home,” she said in her quiet voice. “No, how could you?” She shivered, despite the warmth of the air, and looked at him with eyes bright with hurt. “What happens to them?”

“There is a place for them,” he said. “We have cities built. Most choose to build their own. There is farmland, livestock. At one time, we stationed doctors among them, but they were not…well-received. Now we let it be known that medical care is available upon request. To my knowledge, such requests have never been made.”

“But they’re happy?” she pressed.

Tagen hesitated, thinking of the few times he had been present at the delivery of recovered humans to the preserves. He remembered them, a shambling, wary lot, hobbled and muted, crippled and scarred, looking as if they had known only hatred and fear their whole lives. The children might laugh—children could be happy anywhere—but even their small, filthy faces had been pinched with suspicion.

“I’m sure you do your best,” Daria said softly, and turned away.

“It will all end soon,” Tagen told her. “The Gate that brings our criminals to your world will be destroyed. It had been hoped that some peace could someday be forged between our two peoples, when your race had matured.”

“Or when yours had,” she said, still without looking at him.

“Yes.” He sighed. “But the cost of life is too high. The Gate will come down.”

“Then why…?” She turned and searched his face intently. “Is it the only one?”

Gods, she was quick.

“For now,” he said. “We do not know for certain, but E’Var may be building another. This is why we must take him. This is why we cannot allow him to come away from Earth with Vahst that he can sell.”

She nodded, stared at her feet, and nodded again. “You’ll find him,” she said.

There was no doubt, not even the slimmest reservation, in her words. Her conviction was a thousand times more strengthening than any Magistrate’s praise or guarantee of promotion. Tagen put his arm around her and she pressed against his chest at once, letting him hide her in his protection.

“I can see why you didn’t tell me,” she said. “I don’t blame you. I kind of wish I still didn’t know. It’s so hard to think that…that it could be true. It’s been Earth’s nightmare for so long, it’s almost a joke. But it’s been real the whole time.”

It was every world’s nightmare, rekindled on Jota each time the Far-Reachers encountered a new world. The Kevrian had been the first to actually engage them, and that had been the death-knell for the Far-Reacher program, but see how it had ended. Jotan, who themselves feared domination by alien forces, turning a blind eye to the slow enslavement of the human race. Daria was right. It was a joke, one so cruel, it could not be acknowledged by any power on Jota.

“You’ll keep me safe,” Daria said, her arms tightening around his waist. “Won’t you?”

“Yes,” he said.

He felt her chest hitch once in soundless laughter. “You didn’t even hesitate,” she said.

“Some things do not require thought.” He cocked his head. “Don’t require thought.”

“You’re trying so hard.”

“I must impress a great woman.”

She looked up, smiling at him with her sad eyes. “You know, for a guy who doesn’t speak N’Glish very well, you sure know all the right things to say.” She twined her hands around his neck and rose up on her toes to touch her mouth to his. “Take me inside, Tagen. Make me feel safe.”

Tagen lifted her easily into his arms. “I wish that I could be here only for you,” he said. “I would give anything to keep you from every harm.”

“Show me,” she said.

He carried her into the house and up the stairs. He took her to his bed, in the room where her unhappiness nested, but she did not object and there was no reticence in the way she reached for him. He undressed her, pressing his mouth to every piece of her as he bared it, tasting her soft skin and feeling her shiver in response as he explored all her graceful curves.

Her hands found his head, combing lightly through his hair before cupping his face and guiding his questing lips to her breast. He suckled carefully, his fingers flowing along the hollows of her throat, her round shoulders, her sloping ribs and the valley of her waist. Her body, her beautiful alien body, undulated beneath him, arcing to meet his touch and falling away to savor it. Her pleasure gave him confidence. There was something he wanted to try.

Tagen kissed a trail between her breasts and down to her soft belly. He sipped teasingly at her navel and then moved down, over the cushion of musk-rich down. She gasped as his tongue flicked tentatively at her sex, her hands clenching in his hair. The nub crowning her cleft tantalized him; it stiffened under his careful touch, and Daria’s hips rose and fell in rhythm as he tested its responses. The scent of musk flowed, maddening so near to him, and he slipped his hands beneath her, tilting her up so that he could drink her juices. The taste of her—dizzying and wild—invaded him with all the strength of pure Heat, but with none of its fury. His tongue stabbed deeper, bringing dazzling cries from his writhing partner that only seemed to thicken the fog surrounding him. He could not seem to be satisfied; her musk grew and grew as she came, and he made himself drunk on her pleasure.