*

He had nearly finished his second sweep through the house (taking everything he deemed even remotely dangerous up to the storage room, reasoning that it was already cluttered as hell) when he heard the human’s groundcar returning. Tagen hurried downstairs, the dermisprayer in his hand, and pressed himself to the wall beside the door, waiting.

The human never saw him coming. It stepped inside, its hands occupied with papers, its attention diverted, and Tagen merely reached out and injected it. The human’s head lifted, it started to turn, and then it just kept turning, dropping bonelessly to the floor at the same time.

Surprise provoked instinct; Tagen caught it without thinking. He held it awkwardly in his hands at arm’s length as its eyes rolled and its limbs splayed. The Human Studies scientist had called this a mild sedative? This didn’t look very mild to Tagen.

“I’ve killed it,” he said sourly. “Shit.”

The human moaned, its mouth moving, and managed to utter a badly-mangled attempt at “Shit,” in Jotan, no less.

Tagen’s brows raised. Switching to N’Glish, he said, “Human, can you hear me?”

The human’s feet tried to get under it, but it couldn’t quite manage. “I can hear you,” it said. Its voice was slow and dolorous, as though it were talking in its sleep.

Up close, he could see the human’s face was very smooth and there was something vaguely feminine about it. That meant nothing, really; as a whole, humans tended to have much softer features than Jotan, regardless of their gender. A cautious sniff gave him no further clues, but Tagen was inclined to think this one was female. It had the fleshy swellings on its chest that were usually, if not always, indicative of females. It would be easy enough to reach down and feel it out to be sure, but he didn’t. Even if the human were conscious, such an action would be tremendously crude, but in the state the human was in, Tagen felt slightly obscene even to have the thought.

He decided the time had come to make introductions. “My name is Tagen Pahnee,” he said.

The human did not reply. Then again, he hadn’t asked a question. “Tell me your name,” he ordered.

The human tried again to stand and this time, it made it. “Lindaria Cleavon,” it said, still in that slow, drugged tone. It rolled its eyes towards Tagen and stared at him without expression, swaying on its feet.

“Are you a female?” Tagen asked.

“Yep.” The human nodded at the same time, demonstrating that ‘yep’ was just another way of saying ‘yes.’

Tagen paced a few steps around her, willing himself to become easy in his mind. She was a small thing. Her head did not even come to his shoulder. And she was slender as a reed, her form so different from the muscled frame of a Jotan female. Her face, fine-boned and pale, had been sculpted to a delicate perfection; the left half had been ornamented by a fine interlace of white markings. Her hair, long and glossy and brown, rippled as she moved her head back and forth to watch him. She was smiling, a sleepy child’s smile, completely without comprehension.

“I am not going to hurt you,” he told her.

“You are not going to hurt me,” the human said, with great conviction.

“I have given you…” Tagen looked at his dermisprayer blankly, and then held it up for her to see. “What do you call a thing such as this that makes a human calm?”

“A sedative,” she said, without any hesitation.

Tagen echoed her, beginning to feel encouraged. This was going to work. He put the dermisprayer back into his belt and folded his arms, looking confidently down at her. “Tell me about your planet’s defense array,” he said.

The human merely looked at him.

All right, perhaps he hadn’t said that correctly. “Tell me about the way in which Earth repels off-world invasion,” he said.

The human’s chin drooped until it met her chest. She began to sink toward the floor.

Tagen stood her up again, scowling. “Tell me about Earth’s information and communications transferal devices,” he said.

“See en en,” said the human, which made absolutely no sense at all.

Tagen felt his lips thinning. “Tell me about the door,” he said darkly.

The human turned around, her eyebrows lifting with sluggish surprise. “That’s my door,” she said, and closed it.

As Tagen watched, she manipulated a series of switches and knobs set into the side of the door. “What did you just do?” he asked.

“I locked it. Now you can’t get in.” The human looked at him, weaving on her feet and beaming with pride.

“What would happen if I broke the lock?” Tagen asked.

The human considered the question. “Then it would be broken,” she said.

“Are there any other defenses? Sensors? Weapon triggers?”

“Nope. Just the lock.” The human frowned at him. “And you broke it.”

He opened his mouth to correct her, then gave up and took her shoulders, pointing her at the dark screen of the monitor. “What is that?”

“My tee-vee.”

“What does it do?”

“It brings piping hot platefuls of complete crap right into your living room and inundates you with commercials.” The human thought. “You can also play games and watch movies on it.”

Most of her words were totally unknown to him. He said, “Can you show me?”

“Sure.” The human stood there, smiling at him.

“Show me,” Tagen ordered after a long pause.

She began to stagger in the direction of the monitor and Tagen followed close behind, in case she fell, reminding himself that he had never thought it would be easy to question a human. The scientist had told him the effects of the sedative would last for roughly half a day. Hopefully, it would be long enough for her to train him in the basic necessities, such what was edible and how to use the privy.

The human sat down on the sofa with a rectangular black object in her hand. She aimed it at the monitor, pushed a button, and the screen lit up with images. “This is a movie,” she said, and pushed a button, changing the image. “This is a movie. This is a bad movie. This is a commercial. This is a show. This is a commercial. This is—”

It was going to be a long night.

*

Daria Cleavon came slowly to the realization that she was awake only after several minutes of staring at her bedroom ceiling. This disturbed her; she understood that she was normally quite quick to wake up, and that it should not be so bright in here. She turned her head to send an accusatory glare at the window and the whole room pivoted with her.

Was she drunk?

She could not remember drinking, but it seemed a logical assumption, explaining both the state of her head and the fact that she was still wearing yesterday’s clothes, even the shoes.

She peeled back her blankets carefully, eyes shut tight against the nausea even that little movement sparked in her, and tried to remember where she’d come by the booze. She couldn’t have stopped at a bar, could she? She never ordered anything alcoholic from the store, so she had to have stopped someplace. She could distinctly recall driving out to the post office, but everything after that was a blur.

An image came to her, rising like a soap bubble through the thick scum of her half-memories: a man’s face, huge in her mind’s eye, with the piercing golden eyes of a hawk. Daria sat frozen on the bed, blocking out all distractions as she fought to hold on to that surreal picture. She had the unshakeable impression that she had spoken to this man last night.

Was he a cop?

Daria’s subconscious seized on the idea. She thought perhaps he was, funky yellow contacts or not. Maybe he’d pulled her over for speeding.

And then he took her out for drinks?

Daria shuffled down the hall to the bathroom, bracing herself on the walls like an old woman. She wanted to run a shower, hoping that would clear her brain even a little, and then abruptly changed course and vomited into the sink.