Date: 2013-06-24 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction; Fantasy
Description: What’s a girl to do when her mind is not her own? A provocative novel of speculative fiction from the New York Times –bestselling author. ** Aliena is a nice person who turns out to be an alien in a human host. She just has things to learn about the human form and society. When her body starts immune-rejecting the alien brain, and the brain has to be replaced by another alien brain, maintaining the semblance of marriage and family becomes a challenge for both Aliena and the man who loves her.
Publisher: Open Road Media
Rights: Copyright © 2013 Piers Anthony

Aliena

Piers Anthony

Contents

Part 1: Learning Love

Part 2: Trillion Dollar Project

Part 3: Redemption

Author’s Note

Part 1

Learning Love

It was some storm. The news reports were full of the way it had devastated the landscape it crossed, and now it was orienting on Brom’s neighborhood. The weather station radar indicated that he had a window of opportunity to get in his exercise run now, before the winds intensified. He could make it to the park and back in half an hour if he kept moving.

He went out at dawn in his trunks, T-shirt, running shoes and head band—and paused. His new next door neighbor was standing before her house, looking perplexed. She was lovely, even in a baggy shirt and puffy trunks, with her dark hair bound under a kerchief. He paused. “Are you all right?”

“I correct thank you all,” she responded. “Companion waiting.”

Brom had not realized that she was foreign, not that it mattered. He walked over to her. He had seen her running the other day with a female companion. He had nodded to them in passing. “The winds are getting high. She’s probably stuck in traffic. If you wait for her, you may miss your chance to run before it gets too dangerous. The storm is closing in.”

“Daily must exercise,” she said. “Alone not allowed.”

Because it was not safe, even in the suburbs, for a young woman to run alone. “Why don’t you run with me, then? We’re neighbors, going to the same park, returning to the same place. You won’t be alone.”

She was uncertain. “Allowed this is?”

She had interesting speech patterns, confirming that English was not her native language. “A young woman shouldn’t go with a strange man. But you have seen me before. You know where I live. We’re not complete strangers, and I would be happy to get to know you better. The storm makes time of the essence. I think your companion would understand.”

“Then run we together,” she agreed.

They ran on into the deserted street. It was not yet properly light and few others were up and about, and the storm suppressed the rest. The woman ran well; she seemed to be a supremely healthy specimen. Brom liked that. “Let’s exchange introductions,” he said. They were merely jogging so that dialogue was feasible. “I am Brom Hudson, software consultant.”

“I—my name think is Alien,” she said. “Interface.”

He was surprised. “You do not know?”

“I—from distant world. Name original not pronounceable. They give me name new.”

Brom smiled. “You mean you are from a distant land, so you have a nickname here?”

“That be it must,” she agreed. “Learning language still.”

Clearly so. “You are from an alien country, so I will call you Aliena.”

“This good is name?”

Brom found himself becoming unusually talkative. He wanted to impress this intriguing young woman. “Oh, yes. I’m adapting from a song, Arianna or Oreanna, I forget exactly, only making it Aliena, in honor of your origin.”

“Song? What is?”

So he sang it crudely to the Arianna tune he remembered, vigorously because the jogging increased his wind. “Ali Ali-ena, Ali Ali-ena, Ali Ali Ali Ali Ali Ali-ena.”

Then she sang it too, surprising him. Her notes were bell-like and her pitch was perfect.

“You really can sing!” he exclaimed.

“My planet—my country,” she corrected herself. “Sing communicate by.”

“Ah, like an oriental language, where pitch counts as well as sound,” he said.

“Think I correct.”

They reached the neighborhood park, where numerous riding, running, and walking trails wound through the forest. The rising wind was fluttering leaves and swaying branches, but it was not dangerous, yet.

Two gruff-looking men were loitering beside their path. They started to move as if to block the way. Brom gave them a direct stare and made a motion as of reaching for a shoulder holster, and they backed off. It wasn’t entirely a bluff; he had no gun but did carry a sturdy knife that could do a lot of damage in a hurry. Regardless, a woman with a man was not likely to be the easy prey they evidently sought.

“Martha unknown men not trust,” Aliena said.

That would be her running companion. “She is right. Trust only men you know, and be cautious about them.”

“We together sing trust.”

“We have sung together,” he agreed. If that was her basis for trust, that was fine with him. Her phrasing was distinctly odd, but the more he talked with her the better he liked her. She had a certain fetching naivete, and she was a seriously attractive woman.

They circled the park and exited the way they had come, following the street home. Now the winds had some gale-strength gusts. “In case we don’t get to do this again, Aliena, I just want to say that I have enjoyed running with you.”

“This pleasant is exercise,” she agreed.

They reached their home block—just as the lights went out. All the houses dimmed together, and the streetlights. “Uh-oh.”

“Meaning I confuse.”

“It’s an exclamation of concern. We have just suffered a neighborhood power outage. Our electric equipment won’t work.”

“This bad is?”

“That depends on how long it lasts. Probably the storm brought a tree down on a power box. It may take them an hour to get it repaired.”

They stopped before her house. “I appreciation express running your with me,” she said. “Now must inside return.”

“You’re welcome.” Brom waited as she went to her front door. She tried to open it, but it remained closed.

“Uh-oh,” he repeated. Then, to her: “Electronic lock?”

“Believe yes.”

“Then I fear you are locked out. Do you have a mechanical key?”

“I what is not know.”

“Martha handled the door?” he said, catching on.

“Martha everything yes.”

She was screwed. He was not wholly dismayed. “Why don’t you come into my house while you wait for Martha, or the power return? I can get in.”

“This acceptable is?”

“In the circumstances, yes. As soon as we see either Martha or power, you can return to your own house.”

“This do I will.” She walked with him to his front door. Brom keyed it open mechanically and ushered her in. It was dark inside, but passable.

They sat in his modest living room and talked. Brom cautiously advised her on odd phrasings, and she quickly corrected them. She was a quick study.

“Why did Martha leave you here alone?” he asked her. “I never saw you outside without company before.”

“Martha called away. She meant to return soon. I am supposed to be always with human company,” she said. “Because I am unfamiliar with the ways. I must learn human culture.”

Brom smiled. “You speak as if you are not human.”

She paused. “I spoke with error. I regret.”

“Don’t worry about it. You are obviously human.”

“In body,” she agreed.

“Not in mind?”

She paused again. “I say what not know allowed.”

She was garbling again, signaling her distress.

“Aliena, we have not known each other long, but we have sung together. You can speak freely to me and I will not be offended, nor will I try to get you in trouble. I just want to help you, if I can.”

She considered. “Need I advice what to do. Martha always told me before.”

“And you feel lost without .”

“I do.” She touched her head. Brom saw there was a trace of blood on her bandanna. She must have gotten scratched during the run, though he had not seen it happen.

“There is blood on your head,” he said. “Are you all right?”

She removed the bandanna. There was a light matting of blood beneath it, soaking through her hair. “I—sometimes it bleeds. Not serious.”

Brom fetched a washcloth and poured some bottled water on it. “Let me mop it up,” he said. He patted her head delicately, and wiped. There was not a lot of blood there. It welled from a line on her head. “Have you had surgery?”

“Is tell all right?” she asked somewhat plaintively.

“You can tell me,” he agreed.

“Surgery,” she said. “Brain exchange. Slow to heal. Martha bandages.”

Brom froze. “Oh, you mean you had brain surgery.”

“Yes. The body lost brain and would die. My brain transplanted. I learning to operate body, but connections not all operative yet.”

This was amazing. “Your brain was transplanted into this body,” he said, awed.

“Yes. I must take good care of the body. Eat well, exercise, medications. Incisions still healing.”

Brom was amazed, but had no reason to doubt her. “What happened to the brain of this person?”

“I not completely clear. Believe she suffered immune rejection. You understand this? I do not.”

“Immune rejection, yes,” he said. “Each person’s body has a ferociously protective attitude about its own cells, and rejects any intrusion. This is necessary to fight illness. But it interferes when there are transplants, such as of a kidney. The transplant is needed for the body to survive, yet its immune system fights the foreign organ. It’s a problem.”

“Yes. This body opposes my foreign brain. Medication protects me. But it did not protect the prior brain, which they learned about too late. Rare condition.”

“Her body mounted an immune defense against her own brain,” he said in wonder. “That’s an amazing foul-up.”

“Yes. But good for me, because I needed a host.”

“What happened to you? Some really bad accident that ruined your own body?”

“No accident. My body was healthy. But I needed to come here.”

“From your alien country,” he agreed. “To interface, I think you said.”

“Yes. To represent my kind before human people.”

There was that odd reference again, as if she did not think of herself as entirely human. “So you are really an envoy, learning the local culture.”

“Envoy,” she agreed.

“Isn’t that the hard way to do it? Leaving your body behind, instead of coming here personally?”

“Very hard,” she agreed. “But my own body could not live here.”

“I have trouble thinking of any place on Earth where an inhabitant could not survive here.”

“Any place on Earth,” she agreed.

This did not seem to be getting far. Brom got up and went to the door. “Let’s see if Martha is back yet.”

Aliena immediately joined him. He opened the door and was almost blown off his feet. The wind had risen to gale force and hard drops of rain peppered them like bullets. Nothing was visible outside except swirling vapors.

He pushed the door closed. “I think not,” he said. “It’s not fit for man nor beast out there. She can’t be safe driving. She must be waiting for the storm to abate. That may be a long wait; it’s a hurricane.”

“I know what do to not,” she said, garbling in her distress. “Martha guide me. Absent her from lost I am.”

Brom turned to her and put his arms about her reassuringly. “You can stay here until she returns. You’re safe here.”

“Thank you.”

Then he realized two things. First, that he had just put his hands on this strange, beautiful woman, a familiarity that their brief acquaintance did not justify. She was accepting it, trusting him.

Second, that he liked her, odd as she was. That was odd in its own way. He had not had any such inclination in the past year. Aliena was getting through to him in a manner no other woman had. He knew, because some had in effect offered, and he had politely but very firmly turned them down.

“What are we doing?” Aliena asked.

He took her question literally, knowing that she was not much for nuance. “We are embracing. It is a thing one person does for another, to ease distress. Closeness can make a person feel better, if she likes or trusts her companion. I know you fear being lost without Martha to guide you, and I am trying to reassure you. I will let you go if you prefer.”

“It is working. Please remain. My tension eases in your embrace. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He was privately amazed by how very nice she was to hold.

“I do like and trust you,” she continued. “You have shown me something I did not know. I think the body is signaling my mind to relax. This is an effect I have not experienced before.”

“You must come from very far away.”

“Most distant,” she agreed.

“When you were a child, and you got injured, didn’t your mother hold you?”

She considered. “Please, this term mother. I do not know it.”

“Oh, you were an orphan! A child without a family.”

“No family,” she agreed uncertainly.

Increasing familiarity was not diminishing her oddity. “Look, Aliena, I think Martha is unlikely to get here soon. Neither is the power going to be restored quickly, which means you’ll still be locked out of your house. We need to change out of our jogging clothes and settle in for the long haul. I believe I have some clothing that will fit you.”

Now at last she made as if to disengage, and he let her. They returned to their chairs. “I think I should not burden you.”

“It’s not a burden,” he reassured her. “In fact I like your company. I’ve been alone for a year.”

“I am alone. I thought you were not alone.”

He shrugged. “I have been questioning you. It’s only fair that you question me. I am alone because my girlfriend died a year ago. I—rejected other women because they weren’t her. You aren’t her either, but I like you as you are.”

“Girl friend? Martha is my friend.”

“Not the same. People can be friends, and that’s important. But a girlfriend or a boyfriend is a romantic relationship.”

“Romantic?”

“There are not romances among your people?”

“Not,” she agreed.

Again, he decided that literal was the best course. “A romance is when a man and a woman get together and fall in love.”

“Love?”

This was more than strange. “I will be happy to clarify any and all unfamiliar terms. But first we should change and get comfortable. Let’s see how Lucy’s clothing fits you.”

“Lucy?”

“She was my girlfriend. When she died, her things remained. I haven’t touched them. I’m sure she would have wanted them to be put to good use.”

“Good use,” she echoed uncertainly.

He showed her to Lucy’s room. Her dresses and shoes were in the closet. Brom pulled a red dress out on its hanger. “Try this one on. If you don’t like it, there are others.”

She just stood there. “Please, I know proceed not. Martha dressed me.”

She did not even know how to dress herself? “I’m not sure this is something I should help you with, Aliena. It’s not appropriate.”

Now she was troubled. “Offend I meant not. Burden I regret.”

“No, Aliena, you did not offend me! It’s just that--” But what could he say? She must have been a princess, dressed by maids, and Martha did that job here She was evidently not conversant with the social conventions that provided a woman privacy. “I will help you change if you wish me to.”

She relaxed slightly. “Please, I will try to learn so as not to be a burden again.”

“I will take you through the process. Normally a person strips, washes, and changes. But with this power outage we don’t have proper light or water, so we’ll just change. Take off your sweatsuit.”

She just stood there.

“Like this,” he said. “Lift your arms up over your head.”

She obeyed. He took hold of her sweatshirt and drew it up off her body and from her arms. Her full bra, suddenly exposed, made him catch his breath.

“Now I recognize the process!” she said gladly. “I can do it.”

That was a relief. “I will go change myself in the other room. Come out when you’re done.” He exited, closing the door behind him.

He changed quickly to shirt and slacks, and to loafers. Fortunately he had not gotten sweaty in the windy morning run; he could get by without washing up. He returned to the living room. Soon Aliena joined him, changed. She wore the dress and sandals. Both seemed to fit her perfectly.

Brom’s breath caught again. “You’re beautiful!”

“The body was selected to be esthetic,” she said. “To make the interface easier.”

So they had chosen the prettiest host body they could obtain. That probably made sense, if she was to be a public figure.

But there was one detail. “Your hair,” he said. “We need to brush it out.”

She evidently hadn’t thought of it. “This I can do. Has your girlfriend a brush?”

Brom went and rummaged, finding a brush. Aliena brushed while they talked.

“Please, tell me about girlfriend, romance, and love.”

He thought the telling would be painful, but it was more of a relief, after a year suppressed. “Lucy was a petite blonde, just as you are a petite brunette. We seemed made for each other, and she moved in with me two years ago. We thought we would get married—that’s a formal union, the formation of a family—but then things started going wrong, and we seemed less right for each other. I was pondering whether to break up, that is, not to marry. Then she died in a car crash. I think she was distraught and committed suicide. They said she was texting while driving, and lost control, but I think it was suicide. The irony is that I did not realize how much I loved her until I lost her. I was to blame for her death, though I was never charged and no one accused me. I have been mourning her since then.”

“I do not comprehend all your references,” Aliena said. “But I think I understand that you liked this woman very much and grieved when you lost her.” Her brow furrowed. “I would like to learn love like this, for I see that it is important to you. How can I love?”

Brom shook his head. “It’s not something you learn to do, exactly. It just happens when you associate closely with someone, if the chemistry is right.”

“Chemistry?”

“In this context, it means that you are compatible and mutually attracted. It grows if nothing interferes.”

She considered. “When we stood close together, and you comforted me, was that love?”

“Not by itself. But it could be the beginning of a feeling that grows into love as time passes.”

“Please, comfort me again.”

“Oh, I do not mean to take advantage!”

She winced. “Offense given again?”

“No! Aliena, you never offended me. It’s just that with your sex appeal--” He broke off at her blank look.

“Appeal sex,” she said. “This is something I have? That I should not?”

Brom gathered his mental resources and spoke as clearly and accurately as he could manage. “There are different kinds of emotions. Love is when two people genuinely like and need each other. But for a man it can be simpler. A man would like to have sex with any attractive woman regardless of love. That is, to breed her. To mate with her.”

“To mate. That I know. To reproduce.”

“Exactly. You are, that is your human body is, a remarkably fetching thing, and when I get close to it I feel like—like mating. That is your sex appeal. So I am careful, because that is not appropriate. We don’t know each other well enough.”

“How well must we know each other to mate?”

He spread his hands. “That is something that must come out of the situation. My point is that normally a man wants to mate, while a woman is more careful, because she is the one who gets pregnant and bears the baby. So she prefers a firm commitment first.”

“What leads to such a commitment?”

“Well, normally the two form a couple. They do things together. They embrace and kiss. And if--”

“Kiss?”

“They put their mouths together and suck a bit,” he said bluntly, thinking that would turn her off.

“Please, I would like to experience this, so that I can try to understand it.”

Brom knew he should try to dissuade her, but suddenly the idea of kissing her was overwhelmingly appealing. “If you really want to know, I will show you.”

“Yes, please.”

“It starts with the, the comfort position.”

“Yes! I can do that.” She stood as he did, and approached him. Her hair, now brushed out, was long and lustrous, with a gentle curl. Beautiful? She was a knockout.

He took her in his arms. “Now lift your face, and I will lower mine, so that our mouths can touch.”

She lifted her face. He lowered his. Their mouths touched. Hers was mushy.

He drew back. “Firm your lips.” Then he tried again. This time she was firm.

He felt as if he were touching a little bit of heaven. He kissed her deeply, then drew back, surprised by the potency of what was supposed to be a demonstration.

“I felt it!” she said, amazed. “A warm rush of feeling!”

“That’s it,” he agreed. “You mind may not know it, but your body does, and it responded. That could be just a passing effect, or it could be the beginning of love.”

“The body,” she agreed. “It knows what I do not. That is surely an avenue.”

“An avenue,” he agreed.

“Please. Again?”

“I’m not sure that’s wise. We don’t want to get carried away by the moment.”

“Please. I want to learn love.”

“Aliena--”

He was cut off as she rose on tiptoes and caught his mouth with hers. This time she was firm from the start. She pressed herself against him so that he could feel her breasts at his chest. What a dream she was!

She let him go. “It was stronger. I am learning.”

“You certainly are,” he agreed, his pulses racing.

“The body I think is made for love. I yield to it and learn.”

“Enough! I am trying to treat you with proper respect. Don’t make me lose control.”

“If you lose control, what will you do?”

“Breed you,” he said succinctly. “And we might both regret it.”

“Mating. You said pregnant. What is that?”

“Let’s return to the chairs, and I’ll explain.”

They sat down again. This time she crossed her legs. The hem of the dress snagged, exposing too much of her thigh.

“Pull your dress down,” he said.

“It is wrong?”

“You are showing your leg almost up to your panty line. That is provocative.”

“Offense?”

“No. It’s another inducement for me to mate.”

She adjusted the hem. “I did not know. I apologize.”

“No need.” Then he plowed on. “When two human beings mate, and it takes, his seed is inside her. It meets with her egg, and it grows inside her.”

“Inside her!” she said, as if surprised.

“Yes. It grows for about nine months, until she births it. Then she has a baby. She suckles it—that it, it sucks on her breasts and they provide milk—and that is what feeds it. It is completely dependent on her. So unless she wants to have a baby, with the attendant responsibility, she is careful about mating.” He paused. “It is different in your culture?”

“Very different,” she agreed. “I agree, mating should be carefully considered. It is far more committing than I realized. Thank you for teaching me this.”

“Oh, you’re welcome,” he agreed bemused. What kind of culture kept girls ignorant of the mechanics and consequences of mating? This was over-protectiveness on steroids.

“The man is stimulated by the sight and proximity of the woman, and wishes to mate, and depart?”

“In essence, yes.”

“But the woman wishes the man to stay?”

“Yes, to help her take care of the child they make.”

“So she seeks commitment. What causes the man to commit?”

“Love.”

She pondered, working it out. “If I wish to be a part of this culture, and not to be alone, I must obtain the love of a man.”

“That’s a vast oversimplification, but in essence, yes.”

“But the mechanism of love seems similar to the mechanism for mating. How can they be separated?”

“Ideally, they go together.”

“But if the male and female preferences differ, how can they?”

Brom smiled. “This is the age-old problem, perhaps the basis for the so-called war between men and women. They have to find way to compromise.”

“Compromise?”

“Each gives somewhat, and obtains somewhat. They try to find a middle ground where they can interact that satisfies them both. It’s called dating.”

“This middle ground—where is it?”

Now he laughed, feeling more comfortable. “It is not a place but a convention. They agree to meet and do things together, like eating out or seeing a movie. They may hold hands and kiss, but mostly they talk about mutual interests.”

“Not mating?”

“Not mating but with the chance that it could occur. That is the lure that holds the man.”

“I would like to do these things, learning love. May I date with you?”

“At the moment, with the power outage, the movies and restaurants won’t be operating. But at such time as they are, I will be glad to do it, Aliena.”

“Still we can talk, and hold hands, and kiss.”

She was single-minded, plainly unaware of the suggestive nature of the process. Aliena was amazingly innocent. He was beginning to appreciate why Martha had kept her secluded. Yet the temptation to interact with this lovely creature was compelling. “We can do these things,” he agreed.

Now she gave him a straight look. “I have enormous things to learn of this body and this culture. You are generous in teaching me. I do know this much: a person should not take without giving something equivalent. How may I repay you for the burden I am to you?”

“I think we have discussed this before, Aliena. You are not a burden. This storm and power failure prevent me from working, and I am highly intrigued by you. I truly have nothing better to do today than be with you, and I am enjoying your company.”

“Because this body is esthetic and you would like to mate with it?”

Yet again Brom schooled himself to be literal. “That is true. I am a man and I react like a man. But also it is that the loss of Lucy left a void in my life, and you are filling it for the moment.”

“Lucy, your girlfriend whom you loved. Whose clothing I am wearing.”

“Yes.”

“Whom you mated with.”

“Yes, though we did not have children. There are ways to do it without generating babies, so sex can become part of the interaction.”

She pounced on it. “If I utilize a way to prevent pregnancy, then I can mate with you without consequence and that will repay you for your kindness.”

Again, the temptation was becoming overwhelming. “That would abate the physical consequence but not the emotional consequence.”

“Love.”

“Love,” he agreed. “I know little about your background, Aliena, but I suspect that you are destined for greater things than having an affair with the likes of me. I’m just your neighbor, of no consequence. You don’t want to love me.”

She focused on him again with that disturbing intensity. “I am taking advantage of your kindness. You must be fully candid with me. Do you wish to avoid love with me?”

She was supremely ignorant but also intelligent and motivated. He had to make her understand. “Aliena, love is a joy to both parties. But when it ends it can be such pain as to cause a person to—to want to die. As Lucy did. I do not want to inflict that on you, or suffer it myself. I am afraid that your destiny does not include me, and I do not wish to compromise it. I am helping you now because you need help, knowing that our relationship is likely to end when your friends return. It’s nice associating with you, and I would like to have it continue on a personal basis, but love is no necessary part of it, nice as it might be.”

Her expression firmed. She was getting better at showing feelings. “If I learn love from you, I will not allow it to be broken. I will not do to you what Lucy did. The people I work with will not oppose it once I make my preference clear.” She paused briefly. “But when you know me better, you may not wish to have it. I am not the pretty girl you see. I am a foreign person you may not like. Then I will let you go, and I will suffer. But I understand the risk, and wish to take it. Please, do you wish to avoid it?”

What could he say? “No. I know you are foreign, from far away. What I am coming to know is your mind in this body. Both appeal to me.” He took a breath. “Strongly. I doubt that further revelations of your nature will change my mind. So I may be foolish, knowing so little about you, but I think I would like to love you, if you loved me in return.”

She smiled. “Then we can date. Hold me. Kiss me.”

Brom opened his mouth to protest, but was unable. This was crazy, but he wanted it. He stood, and she stood. They came together. He hugged her and kissed her, and she hugged and kissed him back. Her whole body was heavenly, and her enthusiasm was infectious. It did feel like dawning love.

“I am feeling more,” she said. “We must do this often, and I think I will get there. But I will give you sex now if you wish.”

“Not yet,” he said quickly. “No until you are sure you want it.”

“I am as yet unsure,” she agreed. “But I believe I will want it before long.”

“When it is your choice, I will be ready.”

“I do have emotions. They do not connect well with the expressions of the body, but I am trying to align them. Love is new to me; I must learn that whole. I think that with you that is possible.”

“Like one of the encrypted quotes games in the newspaper,” he said. “Every letter is false, but with insight and patience you can find the pattern and correct the alignments. As for love, it is new to everyone, the first time. I’m not sure it even is an emotion by itself; it’s more like a combination of emotions, with the whole being more than the sum of its parts.”

“I do not know this game, but it may be a suitable analogy. Please, show it to me.”

Brom fetched the day’s newspaper and opened it to the games page. “This is a sentence, but as you can see it is garbled.”

“I do not see. These marks are significant?”

He glanced at her, surprised. “You can’t read?”

“I have not yet been taught that. I am still learning language and other things.”

He was taken aback, but it did make sense. First she had to learn to speak and understand English, then how to translate it into the written word. “Then it is a bad analogy. I did not mean to embarrass you.”

“Please, teach me reading.”

“Aliena, that is a long, slow, difficult process that takes years to master.”

“I am a fast learner.”

He would have to show her. “I will read this headline aloud while I point out the words.” He spread the newspaper flat and pointed with his forefinger. “HURRICANE BLOWS TOWARD CITY. SCHOOLS CLOSED. POWER OUTAGES EXPECTED.”

Aliena smiled. “Marvelous! Speech is recorded in symbols. I must learn this. Please read more.”

He read the full article to her, and she followed his moving finger raptly. Then when he stopped, she looked at another article, and read out those words that duplicated the ones in the first. She was getting it!

“Aliena, I am amazed! I identify a given word once, and you have it.”

“Is this not how it is learned?”

He laughed. “It took me years to learn, and then it was by a different system. Instant sight recognition is something else.”

“Read me more.”

They went through several pages together, and soon she was able to read most of new articles by herself. Overwhelmed by her instant proficiency, he leaned close and kissed her on the cheek. In this respect, she was a genius!

“This is favor?” she asked.

“Yes. I am pleased by your progress and just had to express myself.”

“I like this expression.”

Brom got up and went to the door again. The winds remained high, and there was no sign of the return of anyone next door. “It seems it’s a long haul. We had better eat something.”

“Eat,” she agreed. “I was distracted. Now I know I feel hunger.”

He rummaged in the defunct refrigerator. “We can have milk, and bread and jam. And there’s some ice cream that’s melting; we had better eat that first. It’s not much, but without power we have to scramble.”

“I prefer to do this with you than to have an elaborate meal by myself.”

“I echo the sentiment,” he said, gratified. They smiled at each other, and hers seemed increasingly genuine.

“I am curious,” he said as they ate. “Your language syntax obviously differs from mine. When you get disturbed, you revert to it. I am not objecting; I think it’s cute. But I wonder: how would you say something like ‘Honey I shrunk the kids’?”

“Flying insect vomit, self diminished the young goats,” she said immediately.

Brom laughed so hard he spewed jam on the table. “I love it!” he gasped.

“It does not annoy you?”

“Not at all. It’s you. But I agree that you should speak like us ordinarily, so as not to attract attention.”

“I will do that,” she agreed.

“Your toothbrush is locked in your house,” he said as they finished. “I think Lucy had a clean one.”

“I will use that.”

“And there’s another problem. With no running water, we also have no drainage. We can’t use the sink or the toilets. We will have to use buckets for natural functions, and dump them in the garden out back. Do you understand?”

“Can I sit on a bucket?”

“Maybe we can frame it with a toilet seat. Will that do?”

“Show me.”

“Um, suppose I pantomime it in my clothing?”

“Seeing me do this would disturb you?”

“Yes. It would be a phenomenal violation of your personal privacy. As a general rule, men can do such things in the company of men, and women with women. But only long-married couples do them together, and many don’t then.”

“Pantomime,” she agreed.

He fetched a bucket, set his spare toilet seat on it, and carefully sat on it in his pants. “Bare your ass. Shit and piss as in a toilet.”

“Ass? Shit and piss?”

“Your posterior portion. Defecate and urinate. I used vulgar terms that people do in private. I thought they would be clearer.”

“I will learn vulgar terms.”

“I will tell you all of them. But do not use them to others.”

“I understand. Thank you.”

“Now I will set up my own bucket in another room, and leave you to yours.”

In due course they accomplished their missions, and Brom dug a hole in the garden and buried the deposits. The winds remained fierce, buttressed by fits of rain, and he was glad to get back inside.

“You are wet,” Aliena said solicitously. “May I dry you?”

Brom discovered that he was soaked through, and cold. “You really don’t need to. I can strip down, dry off and put on new clothing on my own.”

“You have done much for me. I would like to do things for you.”

She meant well, and he did not want to reject her. “Here is the problem: if I were to strip naked in your presence, I would suffer the masculine reaction, embarrassing us both.”

“I do not understand.”

“I would show my readiness to mate with you.”

“But I am not yet ready to mate.”

“Exactly. Naturally I would not force you, but you would not want to see my state of arousal.”

“Please, I want to see. I do not know this state.”

What the hell. “I fear I am doing the wrong thing, but I will show you.”

They went to his bedroom, where he stripped off all his wet clothing. Sure enough he had a full erection on display.

“This is different from my body,” she said, seeming curious rather than repulsed.

“Men do differ from women. To mate, the man inserts his stiffened member into the woman. At other times it is not stiff, and he urinates through it.”

“Where in her body does he put it?”

“She has a hole called the vagina—cunt in the forbidden vernacular--between where she defecates and where she urinates. He puts it in there. As the poet William Butler Yeats put it, ‘Love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement.’”

Now she laughed. “I think that poet knew my language.”

Brom washed with a damp washcloth, and put on dry clothing. “I am decent again. Please do not speak of this elsewhere.”

“I will not. Thank you for showing me. Now when I am ready to mate with you, I will know what to expect.”

“Yes.”

“Please, read to me more. I have many written words yet to learn.”

This time he fetched a paperback novel and read her the first chapter.

“This happened?” she asked.

“Not really. It’s fiction. Pretend narrative. A romance. But it is meant to simulate real life, so that the reader can vicariously experience the story.”

“Vicarious?”

“It gives you the feeling that you are doing it, even though you know you are not. That extends your horizon, at least emotionally.”

“Feeling. I must learn feeling.”

“I’m sure you will get there.”

The day passed. The storm did not abate, the power did not return, and neither did Martha. “I what do to not know.”

He tried to reassure her. “You can stay here tonight. You can use Lucy’s room. I promise not to molest you.”

“Here is the problem,” she said, emulating him. “At my house there is always light, and a person nearby. I am a stranger here. I fear being alone in darkness.”

“You don’t want to sleep alone,” he said.

“May I sleep with you?”

Like a child, she feared the unfamiliar dark. He could not turn her down. “In our idiom, sleeping together often means mating. But we can sleep without mating.”

“Thank you,” she said, relieved.

As night closed in, there was nothing to do by turn in. They went to his bedroom, changed to pajamas in the darkness, and lay down side by side. Brom pulled the covers over them. “Sweet dreams, Aliena.”

“Please. May I hold your hand?”

He found her hand and held it.

She dropped off to sleep almost instantly. Brom lay for a while, holding her hand, pondering. Aliena was a strange woman, and not just because of the brain transplant, but he liked her very well. Tomorrow things would probably return to normal and she would depart. So this was temporary. But it was marvelous.

In the morning they got up at dawn, washed with the damp cloths, and dressed in work clothes. The storm had eased somewhat, but the power had not returned. Neither had Martha. They had breakfast, then went out to check the neighborhood.

Branches were down everywhere. They hauled them to a pile at the edge of Brom’s yard, then knocked on his neighbor’s door. Mrs. Green was old and retired, and surely in need of help.

“Mrs. Green,” he said when she answered the door. “I am your neighbor Brom, and this is my friend. Please let us clean up your yard.”

“You dear boy,” the woman answered, gratified. “I have some cupcakes that will spoil if not eaten soon.”

“This is usual?” Aliena asked as they worked.

“Neighbors take care of neighbors, just as friends take care of friends,” Brom said. “This is usual in a crisis, such as this storm.”

When they had the yard cleared, they joined Mrs. Green inside her house to eat the cupcakes. “I am so glad to see you have a friend, Brom,” she said. “I know you have suffered.” She looked at Aliena. “My dear, you are adorable.”

“Thank you,” Aliena said. Brom was relieved, having feared she might say something inappropriate. But of course thank you was her standard response.

“She is my neighbor on the other side,” Brom said. “She got locked out of her house by the power outage.”

“It’s awful,” Mrs. Green agreed. “I am missing all my programs.”

After that they went on to the next neighbor, the Roberts, a middle aged couple. They had cleaned up their yard but were uncertain what to do about a smashed-in front window. “I have a leftover piece of plywood,” Brom said. He fetched it, and they propped it over the window. They thanked him for his help.

“This is nice,” Aliena said as they returned to his house.

“It’s a nice neighborhood. Very little crime here. That may be why your friends put you in your house.”

“Yes. They want me embedded in a good place so that I seem ordinary. So that I will be accepted.”

“You should have no problem.”

“Brom, please tell me: what is it you do, whe there is no storm?”

“That’s tricky to explain. Do you know what movies are? Television?”

“No.”

“That’s what I thought. A movie is a projection, usually on a big screen, that shows a story, like the one we were reading. Television, or TV as it is abbreviated, is a small screen people watch in their houses, showing similar things.”

“I would like to see this.”

“When the power returns, I will show you. I’m surprised that your friends did not turn on your TV.”

“They said there is so much to learn, I could not take time for entertainment.”

“But entertainment is part of life! We need to play as well as to work.”

“Play?”

“Oh, Aliena, there is a whole world of things I want to show you when I can! Play is something you do for fun, just because you want to.”

“Like holding hands?” she asked, taking his hand in hers.

He laughed. “That, too. But it’s more like the reading. You may be doing it to learn the words, but ideally it should be because you enjoy it.”

“I enjoy it with you.”

He let that pass. “At any rate, I work in the entertainment industry. A significant part of it is cartoons, which are funny caricatures of people and animals who do funny things to make people laugh.”

“Why?”

“Because laughing is generally fun. It makes people feel good.”

“I want to laugh.”

Brom realized that he had never heard her laugh. “That happens when a person is pleasantly surprised, or amused, or relieved. I laughed when you translated ‘Honey I shrank the kids,’ because it was funny.”

“I remember.”

“This is like an emotion. You are not yet tracked into it. But maybe by chance we’ll find something that makes you laugh. It has to come naturally.”

“Naturally,” she agreed.

“Anyway, although cartoons are not intended to be taken seriously, it helps if they are realistic enough to help a viewer forget that, to get into their mood. So I take existing cartoons and modify them slightly, not enough for the average viewer to notice, to make them more realistic. To subtly encourage belief. It’s one of those generally unknown specialties; I work under the radar.” Then, before she could ask, he clarified it. “Radar is a form of radio wave that detects airplanes in flight. To be under it is to be beneath notice. That’s important, for me: to have the viewer not realize that that he’s being managed, so he doesn’t react against it. I’m good at it, and have regular work. But I can’t work while the power is off. I do get an incidental benefit from my work: reading people. I pick up on nuances, on whether folk are happy or sad, excited or bored, telling the truth or lying. You intrigue me because your reactions are not normal.” Again he forestalled her question. “That is not bad. It’s just that you don’t react the way I would expect. As if, if I tickled you, you would not laugh.”

“Tickle?”

“That’s a very light touch in a sensitive spot that incites a reaction that is not pain, not unpleasant. Some folk love tickling; some don’t.”

“Tickle me.”

“Okay. Stand before me.”

She did. He reached out and touched her ribs on either side, stroking to evoke ticklishness. She suddenly stepped forward and kissed him. Surprised, he put his arms around her, savoring it.

“Is that normal?” she asked after a moment.

“No. That was your reaction to being tickled?”

“Yes. I had an urge to kiss.”

“You said your connections are imperfect. That must be an example. Unless the clothing somehow changed it.”

Aliena pulled off her heavy shirt and stood in her bra. “Do it again.”

He tickled her bare ribs. She virtually leaped into him with another kiss.

“I love this,” he said. “But it’s definitely a misconnection. Tickling make you amorous. I wonder.”

“Wonder?”

“How you would react to a love stroke.”

“Do that.”

“It was just a passing notion. I don’t think that would be proper to actually do.”

“Please. I want to know.”

“Well, I could kiss your bare breasts. But this is something that should not--”

He broke off, because she was unsnapping her bra, exposing her beautiful breasts.

“All right, Aliena. But tell me to stop the moment you feel at all uncomfortable. Sit on the couch.”

She sat, and he kneeled before her. He kissed the evocative fullness of her left breast. His passion soared, but he battened it down. This was science, not sex.

“Oh!” she cried, flinching away.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to--”

“I was surprised, not pained. Do it again.”

“You’re sure?”

“I felt something different. Odd. I want to define it. I will not retreat again.”

So he approached her and kissed her breast again. She remained still until he reached the nipple and licked it. Then she burst out laughing. She grabbed his head and mashed his face against the breast.

Then they both paused. “You laughed!” he said as she released his head.

“I laughed,” she agreed. “It was ticklish.”

“I think we have proved the case. Your tickle and love stroke reflexes are reversed.”

She nodded. “You would want to mate, and I would laugh.”

“That would be awkward, yes.” He stood.

She put her shirt back on. “I must change that.”

“You forgot your bra.”

“I did not forget. I want to try another time, soon, the tickle and the kiss, to get them straight. I think there was a little tickle in the tickle, and mating in the kiss. Not enough.”

“Aliena, it may not be safe to try it again. Your bare breasts are one hell of a turn on.”

“But your tickle turns me on. That is not safe either.”

Brom pondered it. Probably it would be better for her to react sexually only to sexual stimuli, not to others. She did need to zero in her reflexes, if she could. He should have the self control to help her without molesting her. “We can try it.”

“Thank you.”

He changed the subject. “Maybe we should shop for supplies. This seems to be a prolonged siege.”

“Shop?”

And she had never been shopping? “I’ll show you. We’ll take the car. There should be somewhere with its own power generator.”

Riding in a car was evidently another new experience for Aliena. Had they drugged her to bring her to the house? He preferred not to inquire. He instructed her about using the seat belt, and explained what he was doing as he put it in Drive and slowly pulled out onto the street.

They had to go some distance before he spied an active supermarket. He parked in the lot, and they walked to the store. It was quite busy; many other people, stranded without power, had the same idea.

Alien’s amazement was plain as they entered the store and walked along its aisles. At last that connection was correct. “I have not seen a place like this.”

“It’s a standard supermarket. Next time ask Martha to take you along when she shops for groceries.”

“I will do this.”

He bought bread, cheese, milk, and crackers: things that needed neither cooking nor refrigeration. He paid for them with cash. He saw Aliena looking, and knew there was more explaining to do, about the monetary system.

They returned to the car, and he put his bag in back.

“I can do this,” Aliena said.

“Do what?”

“Drive the car.”

He remembered when a quick study she had been on reading words. He made a spot and probably foolish decision. “Do it. But be very careful; a car is dangerous when mishandled.”

She got into the driver’s seat and buckled up. He gave her the key, and she used it correctly. “The car will go forward, but the way is not clear,” she said.

He explained how to get Reverse. She did it, and eased the car out of the parking slot. Then she put it in Drive and drove forward. Sure enough, she had gotten it just from observing him on the way here. She obeyed the lights and signs.

In due course they pulled up before his house and parked. She had performed perfectly.

“Aliena, I am amazed and gratified. Let me kiss you.”

She opened her shirt. “Kiss me here.”

He didn’t argue. He leaned across and down and kissed her breast.

Her quick intake of breath pushed the breast against his face. “Oh, it tickles! But not so much.”

He drew back. “Cover yourself so we can go to the house.”

She did, and they did. He set the staples on the table, ready for the next meal. “Tickle me,” she said, removing her shirt.

He tickled her ribs. She leaned toward him, but this time did not kiss him. She was slowly getting it right.

She fetched the novel. This time she read it to him, pausing only on words she had not encountered before, which he happily provided. Her learning ability was simply fantastic.

Then she paused. “Oh.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I feel wet.”

“Wet?”

She stood and drew down her skirt. “Here. Am I sick?”

There was blood on her panties. “No, Aliena,” he reassured her. “It is your period. Don’t you remember? It comes every month.”

“One month ago I was transplanted,” she said. “Three weeks ago I obtained awareness in the new body. They taught me to walk and eat and urina—to pee. One week ago they brought me to the house. Sometimes my head bleeds, from the healing incision, but not my body. This is new.”

“Aliena, a normal human woman has a period about every month. Her—her uterus bleeds, slowly. It lasts for several days and then passes. The body’s last period must have been while you were unconscious. There is nothing wrong with you.”

“But what should I do? This is staining my clothing, and it is uncomfortable.”

“Cramps, probably. They will pass.” He considered. “Lucy surely left sanitary equipment.” He went to her room and rummaged until he found a box of tampons. “Take off your pants, wash the area with the cloth, and put one of these in your vagina. That will soak up the blood. In a few hours you can change it.” Seeing her expression, he held up a hand in a stop signal. “No, I can’t do it for you. Martha could, but not me. There are instructions in the box. Read them. Follow them. You will be all right.”

She took the box and went to the bathroom. “And put on new panties!” he called after her.

Before long she returned, looking entirely normal. “I have done it. Thank you.”

“Oh, you are welcome, Aliena. You are learning what you need to. Maybe we should celebrate.”

“Celebrate?”

“Do something fun. Maybe drive somewhere interesting. Where would you like to go?”

She considered. “Do you have a sea?”

Surprised, he answered bluntly. “The nearest shore is about two hours’ drive away. We could go there. But swimming is not recommended for a woman during her period. Well, maybe it’s okay, I’m not really knowledgeable about such personal details, but--”

“You have a sea,” she said.

“Yes. When your period is finished, we can go there, if the power has not yet returned. We can swim. You do know how to swim?”

“No. Not in this host. But you will teach me.”

She loved the sea, but could not swim? “I will teach you,” he agreed.

She opened her shirt again. “Kiss me.”

He was becoming accustomed to her single-mindedness. He kissed her breast and licked the nipple. “Oh, I am starting to feel the mating urge,” she said.

“Then maybe we have done enough of this.”

“No. There is farther to go. But I am learning.”

“You are learning,” he agreed.

At night they slept together again, holding hands. Brom did not say so, but he knew that he was falling in love with this strange, smart woman. Who would surely leave him once her associates returned. He cursed his own folly, to no avail.

They continued their routine of running in the early morning, shopping and reading and talking in the day, and helping the neighbors, who seemed quite taken with Aliena. There was no power, no running water, no proper sewage, but it was actually a rather pleasant time. Because they liked each other’s company.

It seemed like only an instant before Aliena announced that she was free of the period and ready to see the sea. In the interim she had learned to use his credit card, and had bought several books to read. She had also finally zeroed in her tickle and love stroke reflexes. He had taught her about as much as he could; she was taking over her own training. She really didn’t need him any more. He braced himself yet again for her departure, once the power returned, and with it, her people, Martha and Sam. He was pretty sure they would not approve his association with Aliena. She was destined to be an important foreign envoy, not a common local girl.

“Tomorrow early we will drive there,” he agreed. “I’ll pack the swimsuits and towels.”

“We will go there,” she agreed raptly.

In the morning they drove through the still-dark suburbs, but the lighted area was closer than it had been, and Brom judged that power would be restored to his area by the end of the day. That meant, ironically, that his association with Aliena was probably about to end. He hated that, despite the advantage that the restoration of power would bring them all.

Aliena was resplendent in shorts and halter, in vibrant health. She had kept up her exercise routine, showing rare discipline, and it showed. He was getting physically fitter than he had been, too, because of running with her. His exercise had been intermittent; now it was regular.

“You asked once about mating in my kind,” she said as the wind from her open window tousled her hair. “I said it was different from yours. We do not use the looks and words and strokes. Instead we sing.”

“You sing,” he repeated.

“I understand enough of your way now so that I know I can do it. I have been learning love, and now I think I love you, and am ready. But there is one thing I need, for this: to sing.”

“You mean the way we sing ‘Aliena’?”

“Not exactly, but it will do. When we reach the sea, I will sing. If you want to mate with me, you can sing that.”

“Oh, Aliena, I admit it: I have fallen in love with you and I want to have sex with you. But is it right?”

“It is right when I want it, when I am ready, and now I am. I am ready to sing.”

She continued to surprise him. “Can you tell me more about this mating song?”

“It is like this.” Then she sang a single note, like a resonant bell. It stirred him powerfully. There was just something about it.

“And if I sing ‘Aliena,’ I can join you?”

“Oh, yes.” Then she paused, the way she sometimes did. “But when we return, and the power returns, and Martha and Sam return, and you learn the rest of me, it may be over. That will be my sorrow.”

“What is it about you that you fear will turn me off?”

“I may not tell you. But I can warn you again: I am not a pretty girl. That is just my host. I wish I could be, for you, but I can’t change what I am. I can only love you, today, and hope you will love me.”

Her original form might have been ugly. But her mind was marvelous. “I have difficulty imagining anything that would turn me off you. You’re not a murderer or a changed male?”

She laughed, as she could do now. “I am neither! I am an innocent female. A virgin.” She had picked up that term from their reading.

He did not press her further. Whatever it was, he would learn all too soon. Meanwhile, they had this time together, and he wanted to make the most of it.

They came to the sea. The shore was there, and the sandy beach, but no people; the cleanup following the storm must be keeping them busy. They had it to themselves, on a sunny warm day.

“Oh!” she cried as she saw the expanse of it. She scrambled out of her clothes as he parked the car, and ran toward the water.

“Aliena!” he called. “Your swim suit!” but she was beyond caring as she ran naked to the surf. “You don’t know how to swim yet!”

“I will learn!” she called back.

What could he do? He couldn’t let her go alone, lest she get in over her head, literally. He scrambled out of his own clothing and ran after her, naked. There was no one else to see.

She splashed into the water, then threw herself down in it. She lay in the shallows, facing the sky. “Mate me! Mate me!” she cried.

She was ready at last, and he was more than ready. It was time for love.

Then, as he approached, she sang. It was the single note, vibrating again like a bell, marvelously pure and resonant; it was hard to imagine that it issued from a human throat.

She had told him to sing if he wanted to mate. He took a deep breath and sang. “Ali ali ena! Ali ali ena! Ali ali ali ali ali ali ena!”

She followed with another note, sustained and pure and compelling. It reached inside him, stirring his gut with its remarkable urgency. It hauled him to her, lying as she was half masked by the waves, water washing past her provocative thighs and breasts, her dark wet hair spreading in the surf, the loveliest creature he could imagine.

Still she sang the note, and he sang too, having no choice. Overwhelmed by the passion of the moment he flung himself down on her, and in a moment he was clasping her, inside her, unable to kiss her because they were both still singing. And there in the shallow water, compelled by the song, they surged into a joint climax. It was the wildest, most intense fulfillment he had ever had.

“Oh Aliena, I love you!” he gasped as the song finally expired.

“I love you, Brom!” Then, as an afterthought. “We have mated.”

“We have mated,” he agreed.

Then they kissed long and passionately as the waves continued to wash across them both.

He did give her some swimming instruction, and she caught on rapidly. Her joyous love of the water helped; she had absolutely no fear of it. Yet how was it that she had such joy of water, yet never before swum?

In due course they left the sea, and walked hand in hand to the outdoor shower, then back to the car, where they dressed. They had, it seemed, come here not really to swim but to sing and mate. It was enough.

“If you still love me when you know,” she said as she drove them back, “I will marry you and bear your children.” It had not occurred to her to wait for him to ask her to marry him; their love was enough.

There it was again, her chronic doubt. If he still loved her? “I will love that. There is no one else I want to be with, the rest of my life.” And that, it seemed was their engagement to marry. It was not an ordinary proposal and acceptance, but nothing about their relationship was ordinary.

“When we mated, the body pulsed and delivered intense physical pleasure, apart from the emotional joy of mating,” she said. “I enjoyed it, but do not understand it.”

“That was the orgasm,” he explained. “It is, as you found, intense physical pleasure, the body’s way of encouraging mating when folk might not otherwise be interested. It is actually independent of conception. With men especially, this pleasure becomes an end in itself; they seek sex for the sake of sex, not to reproduce. Procreation becomes recreation, as it is said.”

“Now I know I have the feeling of lust aligned. The other feelings will fall into place more readily now, as did the tickle.” She smiled. “But I would like to feel that orgasm again, even though I no longer need to, to learn the way of it.”

“We can do it again, as often as you wish. In fact I will always want it, whenever you are willing to accommodate me.”

“I will always be willing.”

“But the pleasures of flirtation and interest do not have to lead to immediate sex,” he said. “Just as I like to see your lovely body, I like to interact with you suggestively without expecting to have sex at the moment. To sing without mating, merely reaffirming our camaraderie, our love.”

“I can do that, now that I understand.” Then she sang her note, and he joined in with “Aliena.”

Farther along they heard a siren. “Pull over to the side,” he told her. “Slow down, stop if necessary. That sound means there is an emergency vehicle that needs to have the right of way. It is one of the rules of the road.”

“Rules of the road,” she repeated, slowing as she drew to the side. In moments the ambulance passed rapidly, going the other way.

“Now resume,” he said. “We have been good citizens.”

“I am learning so much from you,” she said appreciatively.

The lights were on in the city and in the suburbs as they arrived. Their block was bright. And sure enough, there was a car parked before Aliena’s house. Her people had returned.

“Please, kiss me, this one time,” she said as she brought the car to a halt.

Brom didn’t argue. He put his face to hers and kissed her on the mouth. This time there seemed to be a kind of desperation in her response. She really was afraid of what was coming. So was he, possibly for different reason.

There were a man and a woman by the house: Sam and Martha. They turned as the car stopped, and forged toward them. Martha was at this moment one grim woman, and Sam looked like death supercharged. Brom could tell just by looking at the man that he was more than capable of murder.

Aliena got out on her side of the car and faced them. Brom did the same on his side. “Alice! Where have you been?” Martha demanded.

“I took her to the beach,” Brom replied for her.

“We swam naked,” Aliena added helpfully as Brom winced.

“That will be enough of that,” Sam said.

“Did he hurt you?” Martha asked.

“He mated me.”

Both people froze in place. Then Sam spoke. “Get out of here, man, and don’t look back. You have no idea what you’re messing into.”

“No!” Aliena said. “Brom stays.”

“Dear, Sam will handle it,” Martha said. “The man won’t bother you again. Come inside. We must check you for damage.” Sam endorsed her words by slamming a massive fist into his palm. This was obviously serious mischief.

“I damaged not am! You are whom with associate to self tell who may?” Alien demanded angrily, garbling her words as she did when disturbed. There was an imperative tone Brom had not heard from her before. As if she were a princess, and these her servants.

They stared at her, evidently taken aback. They had probably never seen her so angry before, and neither had Brom.

“If I may translate,” Brom said, emboldened by Aliena’s distress, “she is telling you to fuck off, asshole.”

“Endorsement!” Aliena agreed. “Copulate distantly, colon terminus!”

Martha glanced at Sam. “It seems he is in the picture. You had better brief him.”

“I’d better,” Sam agreed grimly.

Aliena faced Sam, her whole body shaking. “Talk only will you. Touch not. Him tell all.” She glared, and Sam actually paled as if rebuked by a superior. She was definitely a princess.

“Understood,” Sam said.

Now Aliena turned to Brom, her hauteur melting into concern. “Go with him, beloved. Listen to what he says. When, if, if you return, I will welcome you.”

If? There it was again: her doubt that he would still want her, once he learned more about her. It was past time to find out what this was all about.

“Beloved?” Martha repeated questioningly.

“We can talk in my house,” Brom told Sam, as Martha possessively guided Aliena to her house. “I can tell you’d as soon kill me as look at me, and are more than capable of it, but I can tell you this at the outset: I love her, and she loves me.”

“You don’t know her, and she is incapable of love as we know it,” Sam said.

“I know her well enough to know that now she can love, and does. Ask her; she’ll tell you.”

“We shall see.”

They entered the house and sat down at the table. “So what’s the big secret?” Brom asked.

“Alice Nye is not a person as we know it. She’s an alien creature.”

“You are speaking of the woman I love. What are you trying to do, goad me into trying something foolish so you can off me and call it self defense?”

Sam, surprisingly, smiled. “I admit the temptation. But this is business, not pleasure. Tell me what you know of Alice.”

“Not so fast, Sam. What has passed between Aliena and me is our business. I will not betray her confidence.”

Sam looked as if he were considering how best to handle a child who was misbehaving in public. “Perhaps you have questions.”

“Why are you here? Did you intimidate the president, then the secret service banished you to the sticks?”

“I trained in my replacement and moved on to more important work.”

What got Brom was not only the implied confirmation that this man was a highly trained secret service agent of the kind that protected top political figures. It was that he was not joking. Brom’s profession enabled him to read the subtle signs.

“This woman is more important?”

“Far more. She represents the news event of the millennium. Her welfare is paramount.”

Again, the man was not joking. That was profoundly unsettling. What foreign princess would be that important?

“Then why the hell did you desert her for a week? If I had not helped her she would have been in serious trouble.”

“That is correct, and we shall reimburse you for your trouble. This project is beyond top secret, to the extent that there is no official recognition of it. I am trusting you to maintain that confidence because it is clear that Alice trusts you. Martha, myself, and the others are technically assigned to other departments, TDY to an unnamed assignment. When the storm crisis came we were recalled for emergency relief, and were unable to protest without revealing the true nature of our work. The power outage prevented us from getting through to our superior. It was a royal snafu.”

“Situation normal: all fucked up,” Brom said. “That is the kind of idiom I have been explaining to Aliena.”

“It was of course not supposed to happen,” Sam said. “Heads are rolling already. It will not happen again. We are immeasurably relieved to find Alice in good health.” He angled his head slightly. “You call her Aliena?”

“It’s a private personal thing. She’s alien, that is, from a far country, so I call her that with no affront to her intended.”

“You did help her. We can see that she has not suffered from our involuntary neglect. We acknowledge that, and are duly appreciative. That did not give you license to rape her.”

Was the man baiting him? Brom suppressed his temper. “We had sex. It was mutually consensual. We are in love.”

Sam digested that as he might foul tasting medicine. “I have been candid with you. Now please be candid with me. Exactly what do you know of Aliena?”

This did seem legitimate. It was time to answer. “She comes from far away, maybe a warm Pacific island with fine sandy beaches. She does have a thing about sea water. English is not her native language, she’s unfamiliar with Western culture, has been raised in an extraordinarily protective society, kept ignorant of all but the most basic personal hygiene. Of sex, indeed of normal human emotions. She is from a tribe perhaps unknown to the outside world. They even have a legend of coming from a distant planet where things are different. She is a genius of an order beyond anything we have seen before. Her island must have some natural resource of incredible value, maybe even the secret of enhancing an ordinary brain to genius level, that the government wants to exploit. So she is being trained as an envoy, an interface between her folk and ours.”

“She is far more than that,” Sam said. “Did she mention her brain?”

“Her brain, in what must have been a historic first, was transplanted into the body of a woman who lost her own brain to a rare auto-immune malfunction, maybe like your snafu. She has been laboring to align the connections, which did not fit perfectly at first. She is getting there. She is a very smart, determined woman.”

Sam nodded. “This is a good assessment, as far as it goes.”

“She seems to feel that I will no longer love her if I know more about her. Why is that?”

“Because, as I said, she is not human. She is an alien creature. That legend is true; her species exists on a planet a hundred light years from ours. They are underwater creatures somewhat resembling starfish. They are incapable of living on land in our atmosphere with our biology. Her brain has had to adapt from a sea environment to a land environment. It is a considerable challenge, but she is, as you surmised, a genius. She is learning it all and coping quite well, considering. But she is not the pretty girl you see. Not inside.”

His words rang true. Numerous perplexing hints wore falling into place. Aliena was literally alien, a creature from the sea of another planet. It was amazing, but it made sense.

“That’s what she said,” Brom said after a moment. “That she was not a pretty girl. I thought she meant she was ugly or old or ill in her original body.”

“Not so. I understand she was an esthetic starfish. She gave up her body in order to perform this surpassingly important role of liaison between our two technological species.” Sam gave him a straight look. “Now how do you feel about her?”

“I still love her,” Brom said without hesitation. “Her human body is lovely, but so is her alien mind, her personality. She has qualities of character I deeply respect. This is the way I came to know her, and I would not have her change.” He took a breath. “I will marry her if I can. I realize that first alien contact may have no place for an ordinary Joe like me, but if she wants me, I am hers.”

Sam merely sat there with no visible reaction.

“Look,” Brom said after a moment. “I see now why you may not want me in the picture. I’m just the next door neighbor who got involved when she needed it. I don’t want you for an enemy. Please, give me your candid opinion, off the record. Should I continue to associate with Aliena?”

“Off the record,” Sam agreed. “I thought they were going about her training all wrong, and were in danger of messing up the greatest breakthrough this world has ever seen. Hell, she’s a living creature, not a loaf of bread! A genius, but not a machine. She has needs beyond information. But I’m just a foot soldier, here to protect her body; I don’t make policy. But via sheer blind luck you entered the picture, and you have evoked more in her in a few days than we with all our information and technology did in a month. You are exactly what she needs: a man who loves her as a person, not a headline, regardless of her origin.” He smiled. “Welcome to the Project, friend.” He offered his hand.

Bemused, Brom took it. This was much better than he had feared.

“We will of course compensate your for your work. Shall we say a thousand dollars?”

“I haven’t spent that much on her, and it wasn’t work. Let it go.”

“You have learned too much about the project. We need to put you on the payroll, officially secure your loyalty.”

“I have a decent job. You can’t buy my loyalty for a thousand bucks.”

“Per day.”

Brom took stock. “For what? My week with her?”

“Indefinitely. Retroactive to your first direct contact with Aliena.”

Brom stared at him. “The Project pays that?”

“Yes, to start. You are important to Aliena. That’s what counts.”

“You guys don’t pussyfoot!”

“Correct.”

“But do you have the authority to admit me to the Project?” Brom asked. “I mean, you being a foot soldier?”

“I don’t,” Sam said. “But she does. Anything she wants, she gets, if it’s physically possible. There really aren’t limits, ultimately.”

Brom spread his hands. “If that’s the price of her, I’ll take it. But I would do it for nothing. I just want to be with her. I do believe she needs me, and I need her.”

“That’s what makes you right for her. You don’t care about money or notoriety, just her.”

“That’s true.”

They exited the house. There were Martha and Aliena waiting before their house, facing Brom’s house. Aliena was standing stiffly, her face expressionless. She was in mortal fear of rejection.

Brom strode toward her, smiling. He sang. “Ali ali ena!”

She sounded her note, so clear and resonant that it filled the neighborhood. They came together, singing. Then they kissed passionately. Then she laughed, and burst into tears, clinging to him. Her relief was busting out all over.

Sam and Martha were staring. “They never heard me sing,” Aliena explained. “Or laugh. Or cry.”

Just so.

Part 2

Trillion Dollar Project

The next few days were busy. Brom moved into Aliena’s surprisingly capacious house, because it was secure and her safety was paramount; they couldn’t risk her in his comparative shack. It was a marvel of electronics with unobtrusive closed circuit television covering every portion including the toilet; Aliena had not had sufficient awareness of human privacy to protest. Every door was like a bank vault, closeable with an airtight seal, operable only by coded combination. But by similar token it would have been a death trap had she been caught inside during the power failure. In hours a generator was installed in the capacious basement so that there would never be another failure. They knew how close a call it had been.

There was also, it turned out, an underground access that had somehow been constructed without the neighbors knowing. Most of the supplies were delivered via this, because it would have been suspicious to have constant trucks coming to the front door. Only enough for Aliena and Martha were handled the conventional way.

“But why put her here anyway?” Brom asked. “Instead of locked in the Pentagon or somewhere?”

“Because she needs to become an ordinary citizen,” Sam answered. “To be embedded in a community like any other person, showing that she is really one of us. She insisted on it. This is practice for that.”

“I think that’s the hard way.”

“Welcome to put a note in the suggestion box and be ignored, as I was.” They laughed together. Sam was okay, now that they were on the same team.

Brom was assigned his own bedroom, but it was meaningless, as he shared Aliena’s room, by her demand. A doctor came in the first hours and thoroughly checked Brom, pronouncing him fit and clean; he was not about to contaminate her. They made singing love the first night, though Brom knew that the cameras were recording everything. Well, that was just another part of the price of her; he did not make an issue. In the morning they showered together; she was delighted to make him react in the masculine manner, and encouraged him to mate her again in the flowing water.

“I felt odd, before, in the shower,” she confided. “Now I know why: I wanted company, but had none. It was just water. Not even salt.”

That reminded him. “That note you sing when we make love. What is it? I want to understand it better, having had so much joy of it.”

“It is joy. Of mating, of companionship, of discovery, or the sheer delight of a situation. I felt all of these when we were at the beach.”

“So its not just sexual.”

“It is not,” she agreed. “But mating may accompany it, and is hard to do without it, for me.”

Every second morning they dressed out and ran to the park for exercise. She had run with Martha before; now she ran with Brom. Brom knew that Sam was always nearby, tracking them electronically; should there be any hint of anything dangerous, Sam would be there, guns blazing if necessary. It was all part of the natural person presentation; obviously Aliena was a pretty girl who had found a boyfriend to exercise with.

Sam did some spot training of Brom, teaching him the easier throws and blows of judo and other martial arts, as well as equipping him with a deadly double-edged knife in a masked shoulder hostler and a small but similarly deadly gun under the other shoulder. Aliena herself was unarmed, left innocent of such things. Until she braced Brom about the matter, and had him show her their operation. Before long she could handle the knife with disturbing finesse, and became an accurate shot. Sam and Martha were both nervous about this, but could not directly oppose her.

Nor in this: “Please, Brom, marry me now.”

“Aliena, we haven’t known each other long. It would seem sudden.”

“Not as sudden as the baby that will grow within me.”

It was a valid concern. She now knew about contraception, but eschewed it; they were having frequent unprotected sex. Her period had passed and she was coming into her fertile time. Now he realized that she fully intended to conceive and bear his baby as early as possible; it was not just passion that caused her to mate with him daily.

“Normally there’s a ceremony,” he said. “People bring gifts.”

“Gifts? As of personal talent?”

“Not in this case. Friends may share gifts, which are things they give to each other because they like each other. They can be large or small. For example, I might give you a box of candy, if I thought you would like it.”

“That would not be kind to this body, which I must keep fit.”

“Or a kerchief to wear on your head, to make you even prettier than you are. The point is in the attitude of the giver. It’s a social convention. We would miss all that in a private wedding.”

“I will try to understand it,” she promised. “I do not need gifts from others.”

They got married in a small private ceremony, with Martha and Sam as witnesses. He gave her a modest but nice gold ring, and she gave him a similar ring. “We have exchanged gifts,” she said, delighted. It sufficed, and they were both pleased to wear their rings thereafter.

Their honeymoon was a global tour, somehow afforded by pooling their resources (theoretically), visiting the Grand Canyon, Machu Picchu in South America, and the Great Wall of China in rapid order. They spent a lot of time in the air, and Aliena adored it, constantly holding his hand and humming her note faintly as she rapidly read ebooks. In hotels she clasped him closely, demanding mating before sleeping. She was obviously a woman in love. Brom wasn’t certain how Sam and Martha kept up, as they were not in evidence, but he knew they were close at hand, on and off the planes. Aliena went nowhere unguarded.

In China there was a snafu that got them stuck in a fancy hotel for several days, doubtless hardly noticing the delay in their haze of love. But it was not so. “Take her down to the main lobby and lose yourselves in the crowd of tourists,” Sam’s voice came in Brom’s ear. Brom, startled, obeyed; he had not realized that the spy wiring was two way. In the lobby Sam’s invisible hand took firm hold of Brom’s elbow and guided him silently to an empty elevator. They entered, and there was Martha. Then the elevator went down, not up. Where were they headed?

“What’s going on?” Brom asked somewhat querulously. “This is supposed to be our honeymoon.”

Aliena smiled. “Beloved, this is better.”

“You know about it? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Surprise,” she said.

“She was not allowed to tell,” Martha said. “Lest you inadvertently mention it outside.” By outside she meant the regular world.

“So what is it?”

“Not yet,” Sam murmured. “Wait till we board the train; that is secure.”

With that he had to be satisfied.

They exited the elevator in a basement and walked to a subterranean garage where a limousine with darkened windows waited. They got in, and it glided to the surface and moved quietly through the city.

It stopped, and they got out and entered what appeared to be a train station. Martha walked ahead to an intersection of passages, looked both ways, and nodded: the way was clear. Sam then touched a panel on the wall, in a pattern. In a moment the panel slid aside to reveal an opening to a stairway down. Martha rejoined them and that panel slid shut behind her.

Two flights below was a waiting train. They entered the nearest car, which they seemed to have to themselves. It was plush, more like a recreation room than a transportation vehicle, with couches, TV sets, and even a pool table.

The train moved out, slowly but smoothly. It accelerated until its speed as indicated by the passing pillars of the wall was alarming. Brom remembered that they had faster trains in China than in America; this one seemed almost supersonic.

“We can watch what we want,” Sam said, turning on a TV. “Anything from kiddie cartoons to porn.”

“Nature,” Martha said.

Immediately a competent nature program came on, this one about koala bears, which it quickly explained were not bears at all, but marsupials. Aliena watched, fascinated, holding Brom’s hand.

“Now we can talk,” Sam said on Brom’s other side. “We are participating in what we nickname the Trillion Dollar Project, vital to every major nation on Earth but unknown to the general populace. There are no headlines about it, no articles. We do not risk discussing it anywhere but in secure facilities, and even then we are careful, as you can see. Keep that in mind.”

“This relates to Aliena?” Brom asked.

“Very much so. It came into being for her, and serves her; without her it would dissipate.”

“A trillion dollars. That is hyperbole?”

“No. It is impossible to put a dollar value on every aspect of it, considering that global currencies differ and some are extremely closed mouthed about their contributions. The Chinese, for example, had built this underground rail system for other purposes, but adapted it for this goal. That trillion may be conservative, but it gives a notion of the Project’s importance.”

“This is a secret Chinese railroad, that they just gave away for our use?”

“And theirs. The Project is of preemptive importance to us all.”

“The project centered around Aliena?”

“Exactly. She is the most important person on Earth, for all that she is and must remain unknown.”

Brom was feeling a bit dizzy. “And this train is going where?”

“To the space station in the Gobi Desert.”

“Space Station!”

“Surely you didn’t think she just walked up to a corner cop and said ‘Hello, sir, I am an alien brain transplanted into a human woman. Please take me to your leader.’”

Aliena squeezed his hand without looking at him. “I did not.”

“I guess I hadn’t thought about how she came here,” Brom admitted. “She’s been keeping me pretty distracted.”

“It’s called sex,” she said. “Can you wait until this show is done? I am learning much.”

“Yes, of course,” Brom said, faintly nettled as he saw both Martha and Sam suppress knowing smirks.

She turned and kissed him on the ear. “I am teasing. Did I do it well?”

“Very well, thank you.”

She squeezed his hand again and refocused on the show.

“How did she get in touch?” Brom asked Sam.

“The alien space vessel radioed our prime computers with a message intended to be readily translatable. After a week they managed to work it out.”

“Supercomputers took a week for an easy message?”

“The starfish are significantly ahead of us technologically. Good thing they choked it down to our level, or we might never have translated it. At any rate, it was a greeting and a coding table so that we could zero in on further messages and establish direct communication.”

“This happened when?”

“About a decade ago, as I understand it. The ensuing dialogue took time, and organizing our resources took more time. But now we are moving on it well enough.”

“You said her planet is a hundred light years away. How could there be a back and forth dialogue?”

“It is that far. It took the space vessel three centuries to get here, which is incidentally much faster travel than we are capable of. As I said, they are more advanced. It was the vessel that sent the message.”

“And there are live starfish aboard it?”

“Not exactly. They were stored in suspended animation for the duration, and are only now being reanimated individually as necessary. Aliena is the first.”

Brom suffered a siege of horror. “You were frozen for three centuries?” he asked Aliena. “That must have been horrible.”

“It was an eye-blink,” she said. “One moment I settled in my tank. The next moment I was awake in the ship.”

“And you had to sacrifice your natural body to be transplanted to this alien-to-you host?”

“It was necessary. I knew it would not be fun when I volunteered.”

“But to lose your—to do that—I don’t think I could stand it.”

She turned her head to face him. “Brom, I found you. I love you. It is worthwhile, apart from my mission.”

“You have more courage than I do.”

“It was necessary,” she repeated, and returned to the show.

“What was it like, to be in a human body?”

“Weird. My rays, my radial limbs had become feet and arms, and my mind was on the end of the fifth limb. There was the constant oppression of gravity. I had to breathe air without stopping. I had to wear clothing, do my hair. Things were different, like breeding, and love.” She smiled. “But I came to like them.”

“What happened to your own body?”

“It remains, in stasis. That is a field that suspends the passage of time, so the body can exist without the brain. If some other starfish loses the use of her body, her brain might be moved to my body, to restore her. We do not waste things.”

He was morbidly fascinated. “You were selected because of your intelligence?”

She laughed. “Not at all! I am of only average intellect for a starfish.”

“All your people are as smart as you?” He had assumed she was a genius among her own kind.

“Not all. Many are smarter.”

He was taken aback. “So we humans are comparatively dull.”

“It is not your fault, Brom,” she said comfortingly. “You have other values.”

“Such as?”

“Feeling. Your creatures feel. Your brains process feelings for memories when you sleep. Feeling is everything. You care.”

“So why were you selected?”

“I had the best potential for feeling. It was not easy, but I learned it, thanks to you. Others of my kind might have found that more difficult.”

“Starfish are very straightforward,” Sam said. “They study what works best, and implement it without compunction. That makes them very smart, but they don’t generally make good friends.”

“Aliena is a good friend!”

“I am learning that from you,” she said. “Come, the nature show is over. Let’s mate.”

“You’re managing me!” Brom said. “Diverting me from awkward questions.”

“That is true. I prefer that you think of me as a loving wife, rather as the calculating creature I am.”

“Are you pulling my leg?”

She was perplexed. “Do you wish me to yank on an extremity?”

He had to laugh. “It’s more idiom. I mean, are you teasing me?”

She considered. “I did not think so. I want to be feeling with you, and mating tends to evoke that.”

“But actually you are constantly calculating?”

“I am. But please, how may I best impress you?”

“Just be a little more subtle.”

“Subtle?”

“Make me think it’s my idea to have sex. That I am diverting you, rather than you me. I may know better, but it’s a willing self deception.”

“I must learn this. But in matters of feeling, I am not smart. How may I make you think it is your idea?”

“Oh, you might let me see some of your body by seeming accident, as you did during the power outage before I clued you in about that. You might evince a need for comfort, maybe even forcing a tear as you look me in the face. I’m bound to pick up on the hints.”

She faced him, leaning forward with a tear in her eye. Her breasts showed seemingly coincidentally, her deep cleavage heaving. “Please, Brom.”

She could be a frighteningly swift study! “I have an idea,” he said.

“This way, beloved.” She led him to a chamber he had not noticed before. It was a sleeping compartment. In moments they were making almost savage love.

“Did I do it correctly?” she asked as they lay in the aftermath.

“Aliena, you’re always a perfect sex partner.”

“I mean the diversion technique.”

“That too.”

“I will remember.”

“Now what were you diverting me from?”

“My calculating nature. I am learning how to mask it.”

“Keep practicing. You can also use it on people when sex is not an issue. Sometimes they need to be persuaded, and subtlety can accomplish what direct argument won’t. That’s similar to the way I make cartoons seem real.”

“Thank you.”

“But for the record, I’m not turned off by the signs of your intelligence and decision making ability. I know you will need them for your role as envoy, and I want you to be as good at it as you can be.”

“I wonder whether I can seduce you again, already.”

“Why?”

“Because I love you.”

“Aliena, I’m amenable. But I am slowly coming to know you. Is there other reason?”

“I am nervous about the coming examinations, and need comfort.”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

“That would not have been subtle.”

He laughed, and she laughed with him, enjoying the art of mirth. Then she set about seducing him again, as the train continued its charge toward the desert space station.

In due course they rejoined Sam and Martha, who were watching erotic play. Sam turned if off as Brom and Aliena approached.

“No, let me see that,” Aliena said.

“Doll, it’s pornography,” Sam said. “Not your kind of thing.”

Aliena took the remote and turned it on. “This is interesting,” she said. “I have not been moaning with pleasure when I perform.”

“It’s fake,” Sam said. “The sex is real, but for them it’s business rather than pleasure. It’s to turn men on. Real woman don’t act like that.”

Aliena continued to watch, evidently making mental notes. “It is for men? Why were you watching, Martha?”

Martha hesitated momentarily, then answered. “This is a long dull ride, with no need of our alertness, as the train is secure. We’ve been on duty a long time. The porn is dreary for me, but if it turns Sam on, things might get interesting for a while. Is that sufficiently candid?”

“I’ll be damned,” Sam said. “I thought you were just tolerating it.”

“I was. Play acting is a poor shadow of the real thing.”

“True. But when on duty, that is all that is available.”

She merely looked at him.

“We are through with the bedroom, for now,” Aliena said, her eyes still on the video.

Sam smiled. “Madame?” he said to Martha.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

They departed. “Maybe she was a shade too subtle,” Brom said.

“She likes him, but it’s a business association.”

“You are learning to read people.”

“I am trying, but they can be devious and not always logical.”

He returned to what she had diverted him from. “Why are you nervous about what’s coming, Aliena? I am in the dark about this whole thing.”

“I will have my first examinations since I came to the house. If anything is wrong with me, this will reveal it.”

“Oh, your brain transplant? What problem could there be?”

“My brain is alien not merely to this body, but to your species. To this world. They use strenuous medications to suppress the body’s immune response, but these were interrupted during the snafu. There might be mischief.”

He put his arms around her. “Oh, Aliena! I hope not!”

“Your comfort sustains me. I am reassured.”

That was good. But now it gnawed at Brom. Her body had rejected its own brain; what of hers? It was a real and present danger.

They had a catered meal from the dining car, then slept as the journey continued. The whole of it was underground; there was no scenery to be seen. Brom was amazed by the expense this tunnel must have incurred. All to conceal the access to the space station? All for Aliena? So it seemed.

Eventually the train slowed and halted. They were at the station. Brom’s watch indicated it was early evening. What now?

They exited the train and followed a lighted passage to a pleasant room. Two Chinese men stood there awaiting them.

“Dr. Ching!” Aliena exclaimed, and ran to the older one. She hugged him, to his evident surprise.

“Aliena,” he said. Evidently that had become her name throughout. “It is good to see you so active.”

She let him go and turned to the others. “This is Doctor Ching, who did my transplant.”

“Under the supervision of the Starfish Machine,” Dr. Ching said. “I could not have done it alone. That brain is truly alien.”

“Dr. Ching,” Martha murmured, impressed. “World’s foremost neurosurgeon.”

Aliena indicated her companions. “These are my husband Brom, and my associates Sam and Martha.”

Ching stepped forward to shake Sam’s hand. “I see they got the best, to protect her.”

Sam shrugged. “Whatever.”

So the world’s foremost neural surgeon knew Sam by reputation.

Ching turned to Aliena. “My associate and I must examine you before you board the shuttle, to be sure you are in health for the trip. You understand.”

“Yes. My husband will remain with me.”

Ching looked as if he were about to protest, but Aliena gave him a look and he stifled it. The two doctors showed them into an examination room, where Aliena obliging stripped naked and lay on the table, unconcerned about modesty. The associate poked and prodded her and took her blood pressure while Ching examined her head, evidently taking brain wave readings.

“All looks good. We will need blood and urine,” the associate said.

Aliena held out her arm for the needle, then held a flanged vial to her cleft and urinated. They took the offerings and fed them into machine orifices, while Aliena dressed. The associate quickly checked Brom in a far more cursory manner.

In moments they had results; this was evidently a top notch facility.

“My dear, you are in excellent health,” Ching announced. “With a single complication: you are pregnant.”

Aliena clapped her hands like a joyous child, then hugged Brom. “Already!” That echoed Brom’s surprise. There had been plenty of sex, yes, but hardly enough time following her period. Could it have been that first time, in the surf?

“The machine may not approve,” Ching said.

“I will deal with the machine,” Aliena said. “Oh, I am so happy!” She kissed Brom. “You mated me!”

They exited the chamber and rejoined Sam and Martha. They knew immediately that something was up.

“What is it?” Martha asked.

“I’m pregnant!” Aliena said joyously.

Sam and Martha exchanged a glance. “Congratulations,” Sam said cautiously.

“Is the shuttle wise?” Martha asked.

“She is fit for that,” Ching said without other expression. Brom could tell he had a reservation, but clearly Aliena had none.

They went to the shuttle, which seemed to be another chamber. Brom and Aliena strapped down, and Sam and Martha joined them.

“There may be a flicker,” Sam said. “It is routine.”

There was a small jerk, as of something connecting to their door. Then it opened and they unstrapped and stepped out.

Onto a space station. Brom could tell by the trace gravity. Actually it had become trace at the time of the jerk, he realized belatedly.

“We’ll recover normal weight when we enter the Wheel,” Sam said.

“The Wheel turns, generating centrifugal force,” Martha explained.

Sure enough, the passage led downward, and as they went, gravity increased. They were coming into the rim of the Wheel.

“No space personnel?” Brom asked.

“No human personnel,” Sam said. “The Wheel is alien.”

“We didn’t build this?”

“It is an outlier of the starfish vessel, placed as an interface.”

“How did we get here so suddenly? There was no blast of jets, no acceleration, no multi-gee.”

“There was, but we were in stasis. That makes it easier.”

“How did that happen? There was no warning.”

“It is a field,” Sam said patiently. “It encloses the whole residential section of the rocket. We strapped down only as an archaic precaution.”

“I told you about stasis, dear,” Aliena said.

“That was you on the voyage from your home planet. I had no idea we had anything like that.”

“We didn’t, until recently,” Sam said. “It is starfish science that they are bequeathing to us. One of many significant gifts, such as star travel and antigravity.”

“It is not antigravity, technically,” Aliena said. “What you call gravity is actually a deformation of space in the vicinity of mass. That can’t be nulled, only countered.”

“Countered?”

“A moon in orbit about a planet is in the spacial deformation surrounding the planet, but the diversion from its state of rest generates the seeming centrifugal force that exactly balances its fall toward the planet, so it remains in free fall. Thus the deformation is countered.”

“Seeming centrifugal force?” Sam asked. “We use it all the time.”

“There is no such force, merely resistance to diversion from rest.”

“This is too technical for me,” Sam said.

“How do you seem to counter gravity when it is not a moon in orbit?” Brom asked, interested though he did not understand it any better than Sam did.

“Magnetic repulsion, mainly, when on the surface of a planet. Higgs field modification when accelerating in space.”

“Modification?”

“Mass is an effect of passage through the Higgs field. Some objects interact more strongly than others, as with your lead versus feathers. We put an object, such as a spaceship, into stasis, then shift its substance to something that impinges on the field less, in effect diminishing its mass. That makes it easier to accelerate.”

Brom exchanged a glance with Sam. Both of them were baffled. “Is it okay if we just call it antigravity?” Sam asked.

“Perhaps I am not phrasing it well.”

“You’re doing fine. We simply are not physicists.”

“I apologize for forgetting,” she said contritely.

“Why are the starfish so generous?” Brom asked.

That one Sam could answer. “They believe, and we agree, that there is more profit in trade than in war.”

“What are they getting from us?”

“Biology,” Aliena said. “Earth is robustly diverse, far more so than Starfish world, and the intricacy of life is a magnitude more complicated than that of any machine. We will make better machines when we better understand the diversity of life. We are studying your viruses and bacteria, and will progress to plants and animals and fungi. It is marvelous information.”

“But they could make a virus to destroy all life on Earth!”

“They could,” Sam agreed soberly. “But they won’t, because that would ruin the prospect of mutually profitable trade.”

“You’re very trusting!”

“Please, beloved, you must trust me,” Aliena said. “I would never try to harm you.”

“You I trust. But not necessarily your species. We need more reassurance than just their word.”

“He echoes the paranoia of the masses,” Martha told Aliena. “This is why your presentation must be perfect. We don’t want to stir latent hostility.”

“I see,” Aliena agreed, disturbed. “I thought that when he accepted me, he accepted my role.”

Brom saw that he was caught on the wrong side of the issue. “I will take your word, Aliena. If you tell me the starfish mean us no harm, I will accept it.”

“We mean you no harm,” she said immediately.

“Then that is that.” He was simply unable to believe that she would deceive him in any such manner.

They reached the base of the descent. They were now in the full-gravity rim of the wheel, standing before a lighted panel. “I am here,” Aliena said simply. “With my husband, caretaker, and guardian. I am now called Aliena.”

“Acknowledgment, all,” a speaker said as a light played briefly over them. “Enter, Aliena.” A panel slid aside to reveal a person-sized chamber.

Aliena stepped nervously into it. Brom knew this was not from any fear of the machine, but of what its examination might reveal. The panel closed behind her.

“That is the Machine that supervised Dr. Ching,” Martha said. “It informed him of the necessary connections.”

In a moment the panel slid aside again, and Aliena stepped out. “You are in health,” the Machine said. “You are with child. Female, early in gestation. That must end.”

And there it was: the negative verdict. Brom was amazed that the Machine was even able to tell the gender of a fetus that must have formed only days before.

“No,” Aliena said firmly. “She will grow and be birthed in the normal human manner.”

“It is necessary. That condition is hazardous to the balance of your body that protects your brain.”

Aliena pursed her lips and whistled a note. Then she sang another note. There was something imperative about the sounds.

“Copulate distantly,” Sam murmured with a straight face.

“I am overruled,” the Machine said. “I record my objection for the home world authority.” It was clearly a threat.

“Now we go home,” Aliena said, and led the way back up the slope to the shuttle. It seemed their business here was done.

They returned to the shuttle, and immediately (it seemed, thanks to the stasis field) were back on Earth. They exited and rejoined Dr. Ching and his assistant.

“The machine objected,” Aliena told them. “I overruled it.”

“Your word is law,” Ching agreed, though he did not seem enthusiastic. “We will meet again in a month.”

“True,” she said.

“They treat you as if you are a queen,” Brom said as they returned to the waiting train.

“She is queen of queens,” Sam said. “Everything hinges on her.”

Aliena was silent. They entered the train, and it got in motion.

Brom realized that Aliena had not spoken to him directly since the issue with the alien machine. “Are you all right?” he asked her, concerned.

“I am well.” But her coolness was manifest. Brom was out of sorts.

“Brom, couples can fight, over even trivial things,” Martha said. “It is very painful because of the intensity of their feelings; they are super-sensitive to each other. But it is normal, and they usually make up soon.”

“Did we fight?” Brom asked, baffled. Aliena sat beside him, ignoring the dialogue.

“Oh, yes,” Martha said. “You doubted her. You hurt her feelings.”

“But I told her I accepted her word.”

“That is not enough. You should not have required her to give it. You are so focused on her being alien that you forget she is a woman.”

Evidently so. “How do I make it up?”

“Apologize. Profusely.”

Brom glanced at Sam. “Utter abject capitulation,” Sam said.

Brom turned to Aliena. “I am sorry I was insensitive. I just wasn’t thinking. I would never hurt you deliberately by word or deed, and I know you feel the same about me. I blundered. I was so wrong.” He felt unmanly tears welling. “Aliena, I beg your forgiveness. Please, please.”

Now she looked at him. “It is not just that. It is that I fear I have done the wrong thing in saving the baby. The Machine Doctor has reason.”

“But that’s proof of your commitment! You would not bear a human baby if you knew it was doomed by alien malice.” Then he froze, afraid that he had said the wrong thing, blundering again.

Aliena looked at Martha. Her shirt had managed to fall open to his view, and her skirt had ridden up on her thigh. Neither could have been by accident; she hardly ever had clothing malfunctions any more.“Is sex permissible once pregnancy is established?”

“It is,” Martha reassured her. “Provided it is gentle. But watch it in sea water.”

“Beds only,” she agreed with seeming regret.

Aliena took Brom’s hand and led him to the bedroom chamber. He accompanied her gladly. She had forgiven him.

Later, back with the others, Aliena was thoughtful. “This child—she will need a family. It is the human way.”

“She will have us,” Brom said.

“Grandparents also. I have not asked about your parents. We must contact them.”

“We can’t,” Brom said. Then, seeing that she wanted more, he explained. “They got religion when I was in college. They joined a minor Christian sect called the Holy Order of Vision, went to Uganda as missionaries, and disappeared.” He paused, then forced himself to continue. “It was a repressive regime hostile to any suggestion of reform. I think they didn’t trust do-gooders from America, and quietly disappeared them.”

Aliena looked perplexed.

“Secret arrest and execution,” Sam said. “Used by rogue governments to get rid of troublemakers.”

“Oh. But this is merely supposition.”

“Efforts to track them met with resistance,” Brom concluded. “That is the way of such things. Such governments never admit what they do. I fear they are dead.”

“This is painful for you?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Then I apologize to you for reminding you. I did not mean to bring you pain.”

“Not your fault,” he said quickly. “You didn’t know. I would have had to tell you sometime.”

“Then I must approach the other side,” she decided. “The parents of this body.”

“That’s not wise,” Martha said. “The body is a donated host, as you know. The parents do not want to be reminded.”

“They will reconsider if I explain to them.”

“The record forbids us from contacting them. We don’t even know who they are, officially.”

“Then we must find them,” Aliena said firmly. “How may this be accomplished?”

“Well, there’s the Internet,” Sam said. “The big search engines can locate almost anything, if properly used.”

She eyed him cannily. “You know how to use them.”

“It’s my business. But it would be an abuse of my position to use them for this purpose.”

“But not of mine.”

“Technically, no.”

“Teach me how to use them.”

Sam glanced at Martha, “Is this legitimate?”

Martha laughed. “Have you tried telling Aliena no recently?”

Now Sam glanced at Aliena. She was leaning forward, shirt loose, eyes focused on him. He shrugged. “Less cleavage. More eye. I’m your bodyguard, not a boyfriend or credulous bystander. Look eager for knowledge.”

She quickly adapted, resembling a pleading puppy.

“I will show you how to make an Internet search, purely as a skill you may need to use some day. I am not inquiring what you might wish to search for. That is not my business.”

“Do not inquire,” she agreed.

They went to a computer terminal at the rear of the car, leaving Brom with Martha. “And I thought she was shy and innocent,” Brom remarked.

“She was, until her week with you. You transformed her. You taught her emotions, and the real world, and unleashed her phenomenal potential. All we can do now is support and protect her, and maybe enjoy the ride.”

“I love the ride.”

They completed the train trip, and resumed their honeymoon travels, returning home two weeks after starting. But Aliena was not about to relax. “The grandparents,” she said.

“Who?”

“This body is the child of two people who surely care about her welfare. I must meet with them.”

He had forgotten for the moment. He tried, suspecting it was futile. “Aliena, that may not be wise. They probably regard their daughter as dead.”

“But not their grandchild.”

Brom was dubious, as were Sam and Martha, but Aliena was determined. The records had the information, and she had aptly researched them, and the parents turned out to live within a few hundred miles. They were contacted by message and told that the person inhabiting their daughter’s body wanted to meet them. They refused absolutely.

Aliena phoned them. “I am the person your daughter enabled to live. I want to meet--” She broke off, looking at the phone in perplexity. Grandfather had hung up on her.

“We must go there personally,” she decided.

“Aliena--” Brom started, knowing that his position was tacitly supported by Sam and Martha.

“Copulate distantly,” she snapped. “Must I go alone?”

They went with her. Martha called ahead. “She is determined to meet you,” said to the other party. “We are unable to stop her. With luck you can make the encounter brief.”

The limo pulled up in front of the house, which was a handsome stucco residence in the suburb. Martha hurried ahead and rang the bell. She gesticulated as she talked to the man.

They were admitted to the Smythe residence. The man was of middle age, handsome in his solidity. The woman was portly, with long dark hair, bearing a distinct resemblance to Aliena’s body.

“Be seated,” Johnson Smythe said brusquely. “I am stating on the record that this encounter is occurring under duress. We lost our daughter and do not wish to see her body used elsewhere. Your presence here is unkind. Please say your say and depart promptly.”

They left it to Aliena. This was her show. She could be phenomenally persuasive when she set her mind to it, as they had discovered.

“Mister Smythe, I am an alien brain in your daughter’s body, though I ask you not to reveal this elsewhere. You may be repelled by me, but there are three things I must ask of you, and if you refuse I will not bother you further.”

Brom hoped that they took her reference to alien figuratively: a human brain from elsewhere.

“You have the nerve to ask favors?” Johnson asked angrily.

“You may hate me if you choose,” Aliena said evenly. “But I owe you enormously, for donating your daughter’s wonderful body to be my host.”

“We don’t hate you,” Rebecca Smythe said. “We just don’t want to associate with you. The memory of our dear daughter torments us enough already. To see her body animated by another person is agonizing.”

“It’s as if she returns as a zombie,” Johnson said.

Aliena looked at Brom. “Zombie?”

“A dead body reanimated but still dead,” he said. “A thing of horror.”

“That is fair,” Aliena said, nodding. “I myself am nothing to you, Mister and Misses Smythe. But I am pregnant with your granddaughter. She is of your blood, as I am not. She must have grandparents.”

The two were plainly taken aback. They had not thought of this aspect, and of course had not known of her pregnancy.

“Don’t you have competent help?” Johnson asked after a moment. “Doctor, nurse, babysitting? If you are important enough to rate a caretaker and a bodyguard, and have a husband, you can surely afford such details.”

“An alien mother is not enough. I have no experience of this nature. The child must be among those who will love her, as I know you will. She is your daughter’s child,” Aliena said, her voice quivering. There was a tear in her eye. How much of this was art Brom couldn’t tell, but it was devastatingly effective. Aliena learned all lessons well.

Brom saw the man’s granite facade begin to crack. The woman’s icy reserve started to melt.

“What do you want of us?” Johnson asked.

“Please, I want you to name her.”

It was like a hammer blow, knocking them both back emotionally. Names were potent.

“What else?” Rebecca asked.

“To let her be with you, when I must be away from her. To take care of her, as you did your daughter. To make her be like your daughter, to share her background, her religion, her heritage. As your daughter would have raised her. She deserves that.”

They were both shaken, visibly weakening. “And?” Johnson asked.

“And to teach me to sing. Your daughter’s fine voice should not be wasted. I want to do justice by her, too, to the extent I am able. To thank her in my fashion for the gift she gave me. Please, help me.”

It was as if the man slowly crumbled into sand, and the woman dissolved into jelly. Rebecca got up and came to Aliena, putting her arms around her. Johnson followed, and put his arms around them both. The three wept together.

After that it was simply a matter of ironing out the details.

Next day Aliena visited them again, for her first singing lesson. She knew how to sing, of course, but wanted to do it their way. She learned to read music instantly, amazing Rebecca. Her voice was perfect.

“I think the body knows,” she said. “Maybe it is in the bran stem, enabling me to follow where it leads.”

“Oh, I wish you could sing in our choir, as Becky did.” The host had been named after her mother, then renamed after the transplant. “She even soloed on occasion. Music was her life.”

“I will do that.” No one made any objection; this continued to be Aliena’s show. They took hotel rooms and remained in the area.

Two days later Aliena accompanied the Smiths to their local church. Rebecca drew the pastor aside as Sam, Martha, and Brom took inconspicuous seats at the rear.

The pastor had been briefed, with no reference to alien creatures. “We have a special guest in the choir, today,” he announced. “She may look familiar to you, but she is not. As many of you remember, Becky’s brain was lost, and her body was donated for use by another person. This is that person, visiting us this one time, honoring Becky’s memory.”

There was curiosity and evident nervousness in the small congregation. Many were not at all sure about this, and some seemed revolted. But Aliena took her place in the choir, lovely in her conservative uniform, and sang in the soprano section, her bell-like tone audible among the voices.

Later in the service she soloed, singing the selection for the day.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,

That saves a wretch like me.

I once was lost but now am found

Was blind but now I see.

It was absolutely, compellingly beautiful, and seemed highly relevant. If she had not won them over before, she did so now. There was a low murmur of appreciation. It was as if Becky was back.

After the service she stood with the pastor and thanked the church members for their tolerance for the stranger among them that she was. The parishioners were gratified and moved. Now they knew that Becky had not completely died.

“I think that’s a rehearsal for her coming out,” Sam murmured to Brom.

“She’ll pass,” Brom agreed.

They returned to their town. In due course the Smythes pulled up stakes and moved, so as to be closer to their coming granddaughter. It was clear that they had not only been won over, but smitten. Aliena welcomed them, seeming genuinely glad for their company. Brom doubted it was an act. Once she learned feeling, she practiced it fully.

A month after the first visit to the space station, they went again, theoretically for Aliena’s routine checkup. But there was more on the docket.

“This time we contact my home planet,” she told them. “I am now established in my native host, and it is time to tell my people.”

This was news to Brom. “But your home planet is a hundred light years away!” he protested. “You can’t talk with them.”

“Our technology is further progressed than yours,” she reminded him gently. “There is instant contact I can evoke. I need to do this, because only the home world can release the secrets of the ship for your use.”

“Secrets?”

“Like one third light speed travel. Advanced machines. And the history of our species.”

“And you will share such things with us?”

“Of course. But my people will need reassurance that your people are worthy of the information. I will assure them. But it has been three centuries, and they may have changed their minds. I do not know whether any of their other space missions have reported back. We might be the first one.”

This was a startling new perspective. The starfish, too, had their uncertainties. “I can appreciation their caution.” He did not say more lest he run afoul of a sensitivity.

They arrived at the spaceport, entered the shuttle, passed imperceptibly through stasis, and were at the Wheel. This time the Machine Doctor did not argue with Aliena; it merely verified that her pregnancy was normal for her species and she was in good health.

There was a second machine. “This is important,” she confided. “I alone have the key to activate immediate communication, and they will know I am authentic. But the folk of the home world have not directly encountered me or any earthly person. We can not be quite sure how they will react. They may choose not to release the codes we need to progress further.”

Brom hugged her and kissed her. “How can they not love you?”

She laughed. “I love your foolishness. My natural form would be esthetic to them, not this one.” Then she disengaged and stepped into the machine.

There followed a singing and whistling dialogue. Contact had been established!

Then Aliena stepped out. “They are somewhat paranoid,” she said with a wry smile. “They fear that if they give away their secrets, Earth will use that information against them. They trust me, but not the human species.” Her mouth quirked. “I am not pleased.”

“Don’t give them the silent treatment!” Brom said.

She did not laugh. “They require reassurance of a nature I prefer not to give. But I agreed to ask.”

“What is that?”

“They want you to tell them.”

“Me?” Brom asked, startled. “I’ll be glad to. I’ll remind them that trade is more profitable than war.”

Sam and Martha kept straight faces.

Aliena remained serious. “That is not enough.”

“I don’t get it,” Brom said. “Do they want my input or don’t they?”

“They want to scan your mind.”

“Uh-oh,” Sam murmured.

“You mean, to read my thoughts? They’re welcome to them. If I look at you, they’ll get a mindful of hot passion.”

“They will get your entire life. You will have no secrets, no privacy. You will be undressed in a public place.”

“Naked on stage,” Martha murmured, translating.

That gave Brom pause. What would starfish think of his life history? Of Lucy’s suicide and his reaction? Of his private fury with the sects that had stolen his parents’ lives? His boyhood naughtiness? There was some ugly stuff there. “Is there physical pain? Danger to my well being?”

“No. They merely read your complete mindset. You will feel nothing physically. But mentally you will know that they have fathomed all. It may change you.”

That did make him uncomfortable. And yet this was important. The aliens wanted to be reassured that he bore them no ill will, and had no intention of doing them harm. After all, he loved Aliena, and they were her kin. If they read his mind, they would know.

What was appropriate? He could not make up his mind.

“Do not do it,” Aliena said tightly. “It will be the ultimate violation of your privacy.”

“But if I do not, will they release the information we want?”

“They will not. But I will reason with them. There must be compromise.”

His decision came in a flash. “Fornicate distantly,” he said with a smile, and stepped into the machine.

He felt the alien environment take hold. It was like the stasis field, except that this was a thoughts field. It was not passive; it poked into long forgotten crannies of his mind, like turning over rocks and studying the bugs beneath them.

He stood at a street corner as a child, observing a land crab walking there. It raised a claw to him, whether of welcome or warning he was unsure. Then a truck passed by, and its massive wheel flattened the crab, and it was no more. Brom was appalled that such an animated creature could so suddenly and thoughtlessly be destroyed by a power that took no note of its existence. It had simply been in the wrong plane and time. Could he have rescued it, had he anticipated its fate? He wasn’t sure, because it would have been hard to pick up bare-handed. How could he have helped a creature that might have pinched off a digit? Yet he was sorry for its passing.

There was a small pine tree in a patch of forest, longleaf, with leaves (needles) as long as fifteen inches. He had noticed it only in passing. Then one day he discovered it crushed by the big falling branch of a dead oak tree. The oak had not intended to kill it, and had gained nothing by the act; it was already dead. Sheer blind mischance had caused the branch to fall directly on the little pine. Thus was its life snuffed out by a heedless universe. He mourned that little tree, though he had never joyed in it alive. It was the cosmic unfairness of its extinction that bothered him.

He stood silently, observing a wild rabbit. It was cautious, but when he made no hostile move it came closer, nibbling blades of grass. It was such a tremulous little thing, its pink nose and whiskers quivering continuously. It ate its way almost to his feet. Could he pet it? Surely not. Then, alerted by something he couldn’t sense, it scampered away, not hopping but running, its tail flashing white. He was sorry to see it go, but also glad to have had it come so close. There was something precious about interacting with a wild creature rather than a tame on.

And Lucy. After Brom’s parents got religion and died, he was wary of religion. He could take it or leave it himself, but hated any overcommitment. When a girl tried to bring him into her religion, he backed off. When he foraged for company in a local social group he shied away from religious types. He tried a secular online dating service, and the computer paired him with Lucy. She was pretty, smart, and motivated. What was the catch? Why was she fishing in these waters, instead of being already married and pregnant? When they met physically her appeal was confirmed; she practically radiated sociability. So he asked her: “Why haven’t you been long-since snapped up by someone else?” She answered him directly: “I’m a militant atheist. I don’t put that in my description because it greatly limits the field when it may not even matter, but I’m not shy about it. If you start preaching at me, I’ll tell you what I think of subverting your otherwise decent mind to an imaginary higher power. I will ask you if you believe in fairies too. In ghosts. In Heaven and Hell—many people believe in the first but not the second. They are hypocrites. Religion is a farce. I will ask why you want to cop out morally, depending on an ancient text, instead of making your own ethical decisions. Why--” She was cut off by his kiss. She would never get religion. Six months later she moved in with him, and they were happy together. Until his doubts surfaced. Was she really right for him? How he cursed his doubt, when it was too late.

And Aliena. He had not yet understood her full nature when they went to the beach; he simply knew that she loved the water and he wanted to please her. Then she had sung and drawn him in, and they had made love in the washing waves. He loved her absolutely from that moment. When he learned that she was literally alien, well, that was what he loved in her, and it made no difference. She was truly a wild creature. She had become his desire, his future, his universe. She was simply Aliena. But now he had to ask himself: was she really right for him? She was far beyond atheism, being literally an alien creature. Could he make a life with her? This time he had not allowed his doubt to take over; he had crushed it like the crab.

There were other memories and impressions, crowded together, overlapping, interacting, some pleasant, some painful, some neutral. These were just samples in a throng. He realized as it happened that this survey was more of feeling than of information; they wanted to know how he felt about everything, especially living things. Including Aliena, for she was one of them. Again he wondered: did he belong with her? Then he had a surge of reaction. Don’t let the doubt return from the dead like a zombie. He had been through this before, and lost Lucy because of it. Damned if he would make the same mistake again.

Then it was over. Aware that he was dismissed, he stepped out of the machine.

There was Aliena, hesitant as she had been when he had first learned her true nature from Sam. Now he knew why she had opposed the memory survey. Memories were not passive things; they were called up, assimilated, and re-filed changed, if only by perspective. His mind had been taken apart and put together again, theoretically the same, but not quite identical. He had a new awareness, a slight change of outlook. She feared he would no longer love her.

“Ali ali ena,” he sang.

She sounded her love note and flung herself at him.

Sam and Martha bumped hands. They too were relieved.

Now Aliena stepped back into the machine. And emerged almost immediately.

“Retreating tornado!” she said.

Sam caught on. “You mean it blew them away.”

“Yes. They have never before experienced such variety and intensity of emotions. They are reassured, and have approved the release of the codes.”

“They like me,” Brom said, surprised.

“They trust you. That is not the same.”

“But it will do.”

“It will do,” she agreed, and kissed him.

A brief note sounded from the machine. Aliena stepped back into it, then out again. “They appreciate your cooperation, which they realize was a gift to them. They have learned an enormous amount. They wish to return the favor. What do you want?”

“Oh, I don’t need anything. I’m just glad the released the codes, as you wanted.”

“Do not reject their offer. That would be offensive. Name something.”

Was there more here than he fathomed? Certainly he did not want to give offense, especially after getting them to release the codes. He remembered that Aliena had said that her people believed in fair exchanges. “Well, I’d sort of like to know more about them. I mean, they’re starfish, right? Underwater creatures. How did they come to travel between stars?”

“Get in. Ask.”

Brom got back into the machine. He didn’t even need to formulate the question; they were already answering.

He found himself in the body of a starfish. Not the kind he knew on Earth; the resemblance was superficial, consisting mostly of his shape, with five rays and a central body. He was in shallow sea water, feeding off the local lichen. Then something like a squid approached, thinking to consume him. It assumed that because it was a larger creature, it was the predator. It was mistaken. He put a ray on it, injected a pacifier fluid, held it down, and moved over it, enclosing it in a five limbed hug. He oriented his aperture on its head part and issued a thick paste that dissolved the skin and muscle and made a hole in the sac, while its tentacles writhed helplessly. Then he thinned the paste, and dissolved the creature’s brain without harming the surrounding tissue. He sucked in the slurry, feeding his body.

Then he opened his own central sac and squeezed out his own brain. It remained connected by trailing neural cords, but entered the empty hole of the squid’s chamber. The brain filled the space and oriented on the paste-covered neural cords of the squid. Nerves emerging from his brain located the equivalent nerves of the squid, and connected. In time he was able to control the body of the squid. Then he disconnected from his own body, which he left in a kind of sleep in a concealed crevice; it would survive for some time, but would not be active. He had a new body.

The Starfish were old hands at brain transplanting. Very old.

It took a while to become proficient in handling the squid’s body, as it had capacities that his original body lacked, such as the ability to gulp in and jet out water with force sufficient to propel him backward. This was velocity of a different magnitude. The squid’s feeding mechanism differed too. But he was adaptable, and in due course was a competent squid.

He encountered a shark. The original squid would have been prey to the shark, but there were two reasons he was not: he had the starfish smell, which was adequate warning to the shark. If the fish tried to bite him, it would receive a jet of anesthetic that would put it out of commission for a while, and this could be lethal, depending on the starfish’s hunger at the moment. But more important, the shark was no longer a shark, but another starfish. The shark had already made the mistake of attacking a starfish, and paid the price. Starfish did not prey on each other; they cooperated. They recognized each other by that same starfish smell, and behaved accordingly.

When there were no longer many new hosts to take over in the sea, he moved to the shore, in this condensed paleontological narrative, where a catlike predator sought to scoop him from the water for food. It was the cat’s last scoop. In due course it had the brain of a starfish. The conquest of land had commenced.

At one point a large land-bound bird sought to contest a hunting territory with the starfish. Thus commenced the conquest of the air, as flying birds were next. There was no longer sufficient challenge among planetary life forms. There was a species of ape that possessed a new potential: intelligence. Thus there came to be intelligent starfish in the forest. They learned to farm, growing plants to feed them more readily than hunting and gathering could. They constructed domiciles that protected them from the extremes of climate and made their lives far more comfortable. They observed the heavens, and concluded that they represented a new and novel challenge. It took some time, but finally they managed to build a vessel that could reach the planet’s moons. It was not feasible for starfish to venture into space themselves, so they developed machines to do it for them. They also developed the stasis field, which enabled them to put living tissue in orbit without damage.

The starfish were the planet’s top predator, but there was no longer any benefit in predation. Trade was more efficient.

One thing concerned them increasingly: was the life on this planet alone in the universe, or did other planets also sustain life? They built massive telescopes to study other stars and other worlds, and concluded that there was indeed other life. But was there other intelligent life? It became the obsessive question of the day. They surveyed far planets with increasing acuity, and found a few that had at least the potential to develop intelligent life. They formulated a program to contact those worlds. To make actual contact. To offer the trade of information. More important, to offer companionship.

Now at last contact had been made. The prospects were phenomenal. It was perhaps the most crucial contact in their history. It was transcendentally important that there be no snafu.

Brom came out of the memory survey, but not the machine. Now he knew, in severe capsule, how and why the starfish had come here. They wanted to be friends.

“We want it too,” he said, knowing that his thoughts rather than his words were being read. “But caution: there are those of our number who are, well, alienophobic. They will react against any such contact, unless it is very carefully presented. Which I think is why our governments are arranging to have the first envoy be a very pretty and talented young woman. We tend to judge by appearances more than reality. To know Aliena is to love her. The contact will work, if consummated carefully.”

Our sentiments exactly.

Brom stepped out of the machine. “Now I know them, as they know me. It’s a fair exchange.”

“The scientists will be pleased,” Aliena said.

“It’s the greatest story of the age,” Brom said. “But I gather no headlines at this time?”

“None,” she agreed. “The governments are slowly preparing the way for my Unveiling. Until then, there must be no public news. But there will be private projects, as the scientists assimilate the new information.”

They returned to Earth, and to the train, and commenced the ride back to the known realm.

Aliena’s pregnancy proceeded normally, and in due course she birthed the baby girl the Smythes named Maple. They were babysitters from the start, and guided Aliena in the proper care and feeding of a baby. They did not believe how alien Aliena was, but had long since gathered that she did need such instruction. Maple took to them, and to Aliena, which gratified her.

Aliena, competently instructed, became a truly outstanding singer. She traveled to religious gatherings and sang hymns with such clarity and beauty that her reputation quickly spread, and she was beloved by many diverse congregations. It was part of the program, to make her a truly sympathetic envoy, and it seemed to be working.

Apart from that, they seemed like a very normal, dull family.

She suffered a brief illness from a bug she picked up on one of the singing tours. Medication took it out in a few days and she was fine. Brom thought nothing of it at the time.

Then they got news of a foul-up in a distant facility. “They are working on the stasis generator,” Sam said. “Part of the technology released by the starfish after they met you, Brom. But there’s a snag. It’s not working properly, and they can’t figure out why. It’s too advanced for us to understand directly; we have to go by the starfish assembly manual. They have a private deadline of a week. Then they will need to return to the space station to get instruction, which is a bit embarrassing.”

“This happens,” Aliena said. “Part of the code got nulled, maybe by mishandling. I can fix it.”

“Are you a scientist?” Martha asked, surprised.

“No. But I know how to talk to machines. We use them constantly, back on Starfish.” She used their colloquial name for their home planet without concern.

“This is Earth equipment, working on Starfish science,” Sam said. “Not the same thing.”

“The problem is in the code, so that it no longer responds to your machinery,” she said. “That is what I can fix. It is routine.”

“Are you sure of this?” Sam asked. “I am not questioning your experience or competence, just getting it straight. We would much prefer to avoid bothering the starfish machines. It’s a matter of foolish misplaced pride.”

“Could you repair a Model T Ford with an ignition wire loose?”

“Oh, sure. Old engines are a private hobby.”

“I can fix this.”

He raised his hands in surrender. “The plant is in Australia, theoretically making air conditioning units. It’s a long trip.”

“I can’t connect that wire from a distance. I must be there.”

“The holiday crowd is thick,” Martha said. “We’d have to pull some pretty obvious strings to get commercial passage for four on such short notice. That could compromise secrecy. I don’t recommend it.”

“We’ll have to hitch a ride,” Sam said. “Call Potus.”

“That was my thought,” she agreed, and punched a number.

“Potus?” Aliena asked.

“A friend with connections,” Sam said. “You’ll like him.”

Martha looked up. “We need to get to a major airport by midnight.”

“I will take Maple to the grandparents,” Aliena said. “She will enjoy staying there; they pamper her.”

They hastily collected a few necessities and piled into the limo. They dropped one year old Maple off with the Smythes, who were glad to have her on any basis. Then it was on to the closest city with a sufficient airport.

Brom sat beside Aliena and read a novel, not paying much attention. He had become inured to the arrangements available when Aliena was involved.

They saw the lighted aircraft descending as they reached the airport. The thing was huge. Martha was on the phone, verifying their clearance, and there was no challenge. They drove right onto the runway beside the plane.

Brom looked up from his book and stared. “That’s Air Force One!”

“Potus travels in style,” Sam said.

Now Brom focused and got it. “POTUS—President Of The United States. He’s your friend?”

“Actually he wants to meet Aliena. He’s glad to do her a favor.”

So it seemed. They walked across to the airplane and ascended the portable stairway leading to its entrance. No metal detectors, no papers, no fuss of any kind. They were ushered to a comfortable chamber and seated. They fastened their seat belts, and the plane taxied forward, accelerated, and took off.

“If only flying was always as easy as this!” Brom said.

“It is with Aliena,” Sam said.

The plain achieved cruising altitude and leveled off. Brom resumed his book, knowing it would be a long flight. Then a tall handsome man in informal clothing entered the room. Sam rose to meet him, and the two shook hands. “We miss you, Sam,” the man said. He glanced at Martha, who stood politely quiet. “You too, Wallflower.”

It was the president himself.

“This is Brom Hudson, Aliena’s husband,” Sam said.

The president stepped forward to shake his hand. “I have admired your handiwork with the cartoons, Brom.”

He knew of that? But of course they would have briefed him. Brom remand almost tongue-tied. “Th—thanks, Mr pres--”

“Potus will do. I’m just a friend.”

“P-Potus,” Brom agreed.

“You saved her during the snafu,” Potus continued warmly. “When all was otherwise lost. Not only that, you helped her to flourish. We owe you.”

The president was actually talking to him! “Uh--”

“More on that in a moment. We haven’t complete the introductions.”

“And this is Aliena,” Sam said.

Potus turned to face her. She stepped up to him and hugged him. “Thank you for the ride, Mister P.”

“Martha lent you her perfume!” Potus said. “She must like you. Come sit down, stellar envoy; I am thrilled to meet you at last.”

The president recognized Martha’s perfume?

They sat facing each other. Aliena seemed a little uneasy. “I did not mean to inconvenience you, Potus.”

“Oh, go ahead, cross your legs and get comfortable. I’m not going to make a move on you.”

“Thank you.” She crossed her legs, becoming more comfortable. Brom knew she knew exactly what kind of view she was providing the president, who pretended not to notice. It was the tacit conspiracy of man and woman.

“You have been very much on my mind,” Potus said. “You represent the leading news event of all time, perhaps. We want to do this right. We are looking toward a coming out about nine months hence. I will introduce you to the public, and you will smile and be humble. I’m sure you know the route.”

“I do. I must appear as human as feasible, for the Unveiling.”

“Exactly. We will tell them of Starfish Planet, but you yourself must seem to give that the lie. No one thinks ill of a pretty girl. Perhaps you can sing a song. Maybe that first one you sang in Church, ‘Amazing Grace.’ Even our most bigoted radicals will have trouble hating you then. We’ll get a suitable background ensemble for you, maybe the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.”

Brom, amazed, realized that the president was serious.

“That would be nice,” Aliena agreed.

“Thereafter you will tour the world, with similar presentations in Paris, where you will sing in French; Beijing, where you will sing in Chinese, and so on. You can do that.”

“I can do that,” she agreed.

“It is a completely international effort, as you may have noticed from the facilities in China. Other countries are contributing too. We want the whole world to know you and love you.”

“I want that too.”

“You will be the Celebrity of the Century. Do you have any problem with that?”

“No. It is my purpose to represent my people to the human world. But please, it would be nice if I could have my child along, and her grandparents. It would be comforting for me, and a nice excursion for them.”

“And will make you even more clearly human,” Potus agreed. “It shall be done.”

“Thank you.”

“But you know there will be some objections. If Jesus Christ himself came to Earth today, there would be those ready to crucify him again. We will do our best to persuade them to accept you, but meanwhile there will be extremely heavy security. Your days of running in the park almost alone will be over.”

“I regret that.”

“With luck we’ll garner a ninety percent approval rating, and trade relations between our two planets will prosper. We do stand to gain enormously by this contact.”

“I hope so.”

“You are very agreeable. I like that.”

Aliena laughed. “You are a politician, almost as alien to the normal person as I am.”

“Curses! She’s on to me,” Potus said. “Will your husband object if I kiss you?”

“Not enough.” She stood as he did. They came together and he kissed her on the forehead.

“You’re perfect, Aliena,” he said. “I will let you be, for now.”

“Thank you,” she said with a smile. It was clear that they had impressed each other.

Then Potus returned to Brom as Aliena rejoined Martha. “I want to clarify exactly what you did,” he said.

“I helped a woman in need.”

“That, too. Are you familiar with the basketball and ape experiment?”

“I don’t think I have seen apes playing basketball, unless you are being facetious. I’m not much of a fan.”

“They set it up as a challenge: count how many times the white team passed the ball back and forth. It was a crowded scene, with players constantly weaving from one side to the other and through the center; it required real focus to get the count right. I saw it; I admit I did not do well, missing about a third of them.”

“That’s understandable,” Brom said, wondering what the point was.

“At the end of the sequence came a question: did you see the ape? I was baffled; I had seen nothing like that. Then they played it over, and this time a man in an ape costume walked onstage and waved to the viewer during the basketball action. I had never seen it.”

“Because your focus was too narrow!” Brom said.

“Exactly. I had concentrated so exclusively on the basketball action that I had completely tuned out the ape. I was amazed. About half of all viewers miss it, so I was average. It’s not actually that the eye does not see it, but that the brain tunes it out as irrelevant and it never enters consciousness. Well, later it occurred to a doctor to wonder whether professionals could make a similar error. So he set up a series of slides, asking doctors to examine them closely for signs of cancer, I believe it was. He superimposed pictures of the ape on the pictures—and more than eighty percent of the doctors missed it.” Potus smiled. “If there had really been an ape in there, that would have accounted for the patient’s illness better than cancer would. So the question is, how much malpractice is occurring because perfectly sincere and competent doctors miss the obvious, being too focused on the detail?”

“Too many, I fear. That’s scary.”

“Yes it is. Here is the relevance: when we set up the Trillion Dollar Alien Contact Project, we focused so much on specifics of education and appearance that we overlooked the obvious. We forgot that she needed meaningful personal interaction. Call it love, if you will. That is what you provided, Brom, and why you saved a project that might otherwise have foundered despite the best intention of the best minds on the planet, regardless of the snafu. You were in effect the generalist who saw the ape, or the elephant in the room, that the experts tuned out. You not only sustained her, you provided what she really needed. That is why we shall be forever grateful to you.”

“I don’t deserve it. I simply fell in love with her.”

“And she with you. Nature did the rest. That is what every person ultimately needs: to love and be loved. Now she understands, and she will enable her people to understand similarly, and our relationship will be a success. Because of you.”

Brom spread his hands. “All I want is to be with her.”

“With the full knowledge of her nature.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Now if we can just get the rest of the world to echo that sentiment.” Potus looked around. “I will leave you to yourselves now. I suggest you sleep. It’s a long flight. We don’t have stasis here, yet.” He got up and departed.

“He’s nice,” Aliena said. “And he’s right about you, Brom. Without you I would be a failure.”

“Without you I would be an empty husk,” he told her.

“Let’s go to our room now.” For they had been assigned a private bedroom. It was some plane.

In the morning, by the clock, as night and day became meaningless on such a flight, they had a very nice catered breakfast. There were entertainments aboard, and the president was a genial host, acting as if he had nothing on his mind other than pleasing them. Brom realized that it was just possible that was true; Aliena was surpassingly important to the political and economic realms. More likely it was fascination; Aliena made no secret of her nature, here, yet still seemed completely human and feminine. It was also possible that Potus appreciated this break from the constant demands of his office.

In the afternoon they landed in Australia, and a limo whisked them to the masked factory. It looked completely ordinary, until they got into the alien research section, which was almost hermetically sealed from the outside world. Here they came at last to the Stasis Project, which looked pretty much like an electronic center, with myriad screens and indicators.

A harried official greeted them. “We are at our wits end. The indications are correct, until we turn it on. Then they veer off. We frankly don’t know what to do. We’ve never seen a device like this before. It’s like a World War One airplane technician looking at a modern jet plane and wondering what makes it fly.”

Aliena surveyed the situation with a glance. Then she walked up to stand before the main array. She whistled briefly, then sang a series of odd notes. Nothing changed. Brom found himself holding his breath.

“Turn it on,” Aliena said.

“But you never even touched it!”

She gave him a direct look that shut him up. He signaled, and power animated the device. All the dials remained positive. It had been fixed.

The technicians stared.

“I think we are done here,” Sam said, evidently suppressing a smirk.

“I don’t know what you—how you—did it, but thank you,” the technician said, plainly awed.

“It will not give you any more trouble,” Aliena assured him.

They exited the restricted section. “I’m amazed too,” Brom said.

“You forget I am an alien creature,” she said with a smile.

“I love that about you.”

Sam led the way, scouting as always for possible trouble, while Martha trailed. Brom and Aliena were in the middle.

Suddenly a door flung open and a wild-eyed man in an executive uniform burst upon them. “Devil woman!” he screamed, drawing a knife.

Brom was too surprised to react. He just stood there.

Sam whirled, a plastic pistol appearing in his hand. But Martha was closer. She stepped into the man, blocked him off, and sent him sprawling. Before he could get up factory personnel were upon him, manacling him and hauling him away. An official apologized profusely. “We thought he was safe. There was no warning he would snap.”

Sam silenced him with a gesture. “These things happen. Just keep it out of the news.”

“When may I react?” Aliena asked Brom tightly.

“Now,” he said, enfolding her. “You may cry.” New things still needed to be zeroed in. She felt the emotions but needed to know exactly how to express them in the human fashion, so as not to give away her alien nature.

“That man wanted to kill me,” she sobbed. “I feel fear.”

“You are right to feel it,” Brom said. “We all fear death. But remember, Sam and Martha are here to protect you, and they are competent in ways I am not. If Martha had not intercepted him, Sam would have shot him. You were not in much actual danger.”

“I will remember.”

“I’m sorry I did not move to stop him. I was frozen. Sam and Martha had to do it.”

“You are not trained as they are.” Now she was reassuring him.

“Thank you,” he said wryly.

“Death,” she said thoughtfully as she recovered. “We know of it, and do not like it. How does it normally occur with human beings?”

“Normally we grow old, maybe to eighty of our years if illness or accident does not bring it sooner. Then our powers fail, and finally we expire. It is usually a sad occasion.”

“The body remains?”

“It remains,” he agreed. “But dead. It will spoil soon, so it is buried or cremated—that is, burned up. There is usually a ceremony of termination, with people saying good things about the deceased, and shedding of tears of grief. Some believe that there is a spirit that continues after the mortal host expires, an immaterial ghost that hovers near where the death occurred, particularly if there is unfinished business.” He smiled. “Ghosts can be caring or malignant. As a general rule, people do not want to encounter one, and do not want to anger one.”

“Ghosts,” she repeated. “Are they similar to zombies?”

“Only very vaguely. Zombies are animated corpses; ghosts are simply wraiths.”

“Do you believe in them?”

“Only figuratively. I think they are just part of mythology. Ghost stories abound, and can be fun, but that’s all they are: stories.”

“That is interesting. Thank you. I do not wish to become a ghost.”

They walked on out of the factory and to the limo. Brom was amazed not so much by the snapping of the executive, knowing that there was no predicting such things, but by Martha. It had been no accident the way she dispatched the attacker; she had known exactly how. He had not known that she was a martial artist too, though of course it made sense. The president had called her Wallflower, and that fit; she remained mostly in the sidelines, seeming innocuous. Until she had to act.

“Thank you,” Sam murmured to Martha in the limo. “I preferred not to shoot so close to Aliena.”

“You’d have scored, but your expertise might have seemed suspicious,” she said. “It was better to block him off without gunfire.”

“Yes.” And that, it seemed, was that. It was all part of their job.

There followed the long flight back to America. The plane had evidently been refueled while they were at the factory.

“So you fixed it,” Potus said to Aliena.

“Such machines are common on my world. When they go wrong, we fix them. I knew by the description that this was a simple fix.”

“Like reconnecting a separated ignition wire,” Sam said.

“You are nevertheless a marvel,” Potus told her. “I envy Brom.”

They laughed together, but again Brom was not certain it was a joke. It reminded him how lucky he was to have Aliena.

“But we need to know how that exec caught on to Aliena’s nature,” Potus continued. “He was not part of the special project. If news is leaking out, it’s mischief.”

“Mischief,” Sam agreed grimly. “We do need to move on to the Unveiling.”

Back in America the next day they fetched Maple from her grandparents. “Love!” the little girl exclaimed, using the better part of her vocabulary.

“Love you too,” Aliena replied, hugging her.

“She’s been a little angel,” Rebecca reported.

“Thank you so much for keeping her.”

“But she did miss you. I hope that you can take her along on future trips.”

“We will,” Aliena agreed. “And you too.”

Brom was just glad that the excursion had been a success, and that they had safely returned. He knew that things were bound to get complicated after the Unveiling. But for now he was supremely glad to have blundered into this almost perfect life.

“Do you know, there was a report that Air Force one was seen in the area,” Johnson remarked. “Interesting coincidence.”

“Very interesting,” Brom agreed.

Johnson glanced at him, aware that there was more here than met the eye.

That was another thing. The Smythes would have to be told the rest of the story before long. The unveiling was bound to affect their lives too.

“Soon,” Sam said, as if reading his thought. “Nine months seems like very little time.”

“Very little time,” Brom agreed.

Part 3

Redemption

The word came within a month: tell them. The authorities thought it would be best if Brom and Aliena did it themselves; Sam and Martha, who had become like family friends, remained in the background.

They sat in the Smythe’s family room, with Maple, now ten months old, on Aliena’s lap. “You know that Aliena is special,” Brom said. “But not how special.”

“Was that you on Air Force One?” Johnson asked alertly.

“Yes. We met the president and went to Australia, where Aliena helped fix a piece of equipment.”

“You are that important?”

“Aliena is. The president wanted to meet her, and I think he liked her.”

“I crossed my legs,” Aliena said.

Johnson laughed. “That would do it.”

“But be more cautious in the future,” Rebecca said. “This sort of thing can be overdone.”

Brom got serious. “You know that Aliena is a brain from a person in a far place. That she is being groomed to be an envoy, a contact between her people and ours. A truly historic connection.”

“But that is not the whole of it,” Johnson said. “No place on Earth could rate such extraordinary arrangements.”

“Exactly. She is a literal alien, from another planet. Her natural body could not survive here on the surface of Earth. She has to have a human body.” He went on to tell them the rest, while Aliena nodded.

Now came the crunch. Could they still accept Aliena as a family member?

The Smiths considered. “We knew there was something,” Johnson said. “But we underestimated the reality. We thought we were prepared, but it’s a shock.”

“But we know Aliena,” Rebecca said. “Of course we still accept her.”

It was as though Aliena had been holding her breath all this time. Now she dissolved into tears of relief. It was all right.

“There will be a huge ceremony of Unveiling in about a year or fourteen months,” Brom said. “All over the world. The top officials of most of the countries will attend. The newspapers and Internet will have complete information. Everyone will know. She will abruptly be the leading celebrity of the age. There will be a backwash, as reporters seek to unravel every detail of what we call the Trillion Dollar Project. That means that your privacy will vanish. You will have security, but you will live in a virtual glass house. We can arrange to take you out of circulation if you prefer, to move to a closed community. But serious disruption is inevitable.”

Maple grew restless. Rebecca came to pick her up. “We will handle it,” she said. “As long as we can continue to be with our grandchild.”

“Oh, yes. We will depend on you to be with her and protect her from the mob. We hope you will travel with us, taking Maple in charge, so that she is not unduly exposed. There will be times when Aliena will be unable, because of the demands of her office.”

“We understand, and are gratified,” Johnson said.

Then odd things started happening. Aliena got confused about minor arrangements, forgetting to feed Maple, or to dress her properly. Rebecca was quick to pick up on these, and fixed them without saying anything. Brom noticed it too, as Aliena’ moods became unusually changeable. Sometimes she was wild for sex, then turned off once they got in bed. She went from happy to sad in minutes. She lost her place when singing a hymn at a recital, and had to be refreshed. Her memory had always been perfect before.

“I must have a cucumber sandwich,” she said. “Now.” There was no cucumber in the house; they had to scramble to get out to the grocery store to buy one. But when they got it home she dropped it on the floor, uninterested. Then she thought she saw bedbugs in her bed, and would accept no assurances that there weren’t. Martha had to clear away all the bedding and replace it, but Star remained sure there were bugs hiding just out of sight.

Then she had what had to be a hallucination. A boulder fell on her, killing her instantly, but now she had returned, as a ghost, to make sure that Brom was doing what he promised. No such thing had happened, yet she was sure of it.

“A ghost is not solid,” Brom reminded her. “It may be apparent, and can be heard, but it can’t actually do anything physical. You can.”

She considered that. “Maybe I’m a new kind of ghost.”

“Also, ghosts, being immaterial, don’t get hungry. They don’t have natural functions.”

“Oh, I have to go poop!” She ran to the bathroom, but stopped. “The bugs are there!”

He finally get her settled, concluding that she hadn’t really died; it was just a bad dream.

“Do zombies poop?” she asked.

Brom froze. But then she smiled. “I know I’m not a zombie. I was just curious.”

“We can research it in the Internet,” he said. But she had already lost interest.

Then she became paranoid. “You’re not Brom!” she said. “You’re an impostor taking his place, come to kill me.”

“Aliena--”

“Get away from me! I don’t know you!”

He simply had to retreat, unable to reassure her.

“I don’t know what’s come over her,” Brom said privately to the Smythes. “She was never like this before. Can the preparations for the Unveiling be stressing her?”

“I hope it’s not what I fear it is,” Johnson said.

“What do you think it is?”

“Rejection.”

“Nobody’s rejecting her!”

“Auto-immune rejection of the transplant brain,” he said grimly. “We have seen it before.”

“Anti-NMDA-receptor autoimmune encephalitis,” Rebecca recited with a shudder. “It destroyed Becky’s brain before we got an accurate diagnosis. That’s why her body was available.”

“Oh, shit!”

“Becky started out with little things, but it got worse. Much worse. Until she lost it. Better have Aliena competently checked, soon.”

They did, and the verdict was horrible: the body was making a full-fledged immune attack on the brain, treating it as the foreign object it was. She had to be treated immediately, and taken out of circulation for the duration.

Dr. Ching traveled all the way from China to verify the diagnosis personally. “Three things may have triggered it,” he said. “That week of missing her medications during the snafu. Her pregnancy. Her recent case of strep throat. We may never know the specific cause, but it is doubtful that we can stave it off. The attack is ferocious.”

“But in seven months she has the unveiling!” Brom protested.

“She will not be able to attend.”

“This is mischief,” Sam said. “The plans are far developed. A hundred countries and two planets are orienting on the date. It would be disastrous to try to stop it now.”

“Aliena will not be up to it,” Dr. Ching said. “We will treat the condition, but it will take or months or even years for her to recover sufficiently. There is only one way to meet that deadline.”

“We’ll have to do it,” Brom said.

“You will not like it.”

“Don’t pussyfoot! What is it?”

“Another brain transplant. Put in a new starfish brain, a healthy one that will not incite the host body’s defenses. And be sure the medication is never interrupted. We have learned from this experience, and will make sure this does not happen again.”

Brom was stunned. “But—that would kill her!”

“Perhaps not. She might be transplanted back to her own body, which remains in stasis.”

“I love her! How could I be with her then?”

“You could not. You would have to be with the replacement.”

Brom, reeling, went to lie down. Aliena, concerned, joined him. Spot medication had suppressed the symptoms and made her lucid. “Are you well?” she inquired.

He let her have it: “You are suffering brain rejection by the host body.”

“Oh! I knew something was wrong. I have not been feeling well.”

“They want to replace you with another Starfish brain.”

“Yes, of course. That is the practical thing.”

“Aliena! I couldn’t stand to lose you!”

“Brom, we knew this was a risk. It’s why the Machine Doctor didn’t want me to have the baby. But the replacement could do the things I can not, and that is what is important.”

“Aliena!”

She lay down beside him and put her arms around him, comforting him. “I am sorry to bring this pain upon you. I love you and do not want to leave you. But the Unveiling must take place. This is bigger than we are.”

“Oh, Aliena!” he sobbed into her bosom. “There must be some way.”

“The replacement will be much like me,” she said. “You can learn to love her too.”

“Never!”

“Mate me before I forget how,” she said. “The medication is losing ground; I feel the retreat. It is a temporary measure, not a cure.”

That only made it worse.

It was quickly arranged. This time a party of nine made the journey to China: Brom, Aliena, Sam, Martha, Dr. Ching, his assistant, Johnson, Rebecca, and Maple. The party was this large because Aliena insisted on it; she wanted her husband, child, and friends along for her termination. Also for her replacement to meet them. “She will need your help,” she said. “I have in mind a friend who can do the job, and she will be given all that I have learned except the emotions, but it will still be difficult for her. Especially learning love.”

“I think the starfish have a certain discipline we lack,” Johnson murmured to Brom. The marvels of the trip were largely wasted on them because of the loss they portended. They were losing Aliena.

At the Wheel the Machine challenged them. “Only the patient and the surgeons go to the mother ship, as before.”

Aliena whistled and sang. No one needed to translate that to “Fornicate Distantly.” She was stressed, and drugged, but still knew what was what. The Bachine withdrew its objection.

They got into a second shuttle—and out again in a moment, stasis assisted. Now they entered a huge complex. “The starfish primary vessel is the size of a planetoid,” Dr. Ching said. “Far more massive than anything we have put in space. It is surrounded by a small fleet of service ships, such as the one that brought us here. It is hidden somewhere in the asteroid belt, as a matter of simply routine caution. It will approach Earth at such time as the Unveiling has made it welcome.”

“It has Earth air,” Brom noted.

“This section has been pressurized to our specifications for our benefit. The Starfish are excellent hosts.”

Several passages exited from the arrival chamber. One was illuminated. They walked through that one. It led to a chamber where a number of what looked like beached boats lay. One of them glowed, and they went to it and climbed in, sitting on its comfortable seats. Then water coursed into the chamber. The boat lifted and floated forward as the water flowed like a river, carrying it alone.

“Well, they are Starfish,” Johnson said admiringly. “Water is natural to them, as air is to us.”

The current increased, carrying them rapidly along. They passed glassed-in chambers where aquatic plants grew in artificial light and strange creatures swam. And on the rocky floor, sure enough, were large colored starfish.

“I think we are getting the scenic tour,” Johnson said.

“This vessel is gradually coming alive,” Dr. Ching said. “After three centuries in stasis. They are scouting for suitable colony moons.”

“Not Earth?” Brom asked.

“Not Earth,” Ching agreed. “Its seas are too polluted. What they want from us is companionship, not habitat. They can find habitat closer to their home.”

“There are many water worlds within a few light years of Starfish Planet,” Aliena said. “But no intelligent life forms.”

They came to a landing rather like a subway station, with a wall resembling the facade of a hotel. They got out and went to it. “This is the residence,” Ching said. “With pleasant accommodations for all of us. They even pipe in news and entertainment video. But if we get bored, stasis is an option. We’ll be here for more than a week.”

“We have our own room,” Aliena told Brom. “I remain heavily drugged to keep me sane and sensible until tomorrow when I have the surgery. Please, I want to make love to you now, and again tonight, but you will have to guide it because I may not be competent on details. This is my last day with you, and I want it to be memorable.”

“Oh, Aliena!” he said in anguish.

“It’s nap time for you, Maple,” Rebecca said, taking the child. “You’ll be back with mommy soon.”

“Bye mommy,” Maple said obediently, proffering her cheek to be kissed.

“Aliena,” he said when they were alone in their quite comfortable hotel style room. “I’m not handling this well. I just can’t bear the thought of losing you.”

“It will not be a complete loss, Brom. I will merely return to my original body, and you will retain the use of this human host.” She patted her own bosom. “My replacement will be competent, especially when you instruct her in the nuances, as you did me.”

“But she won’t be you!”

“I regret that. I will miss our contact, and I will retain my love for you. We will have communication.”

“Aliena, how can I be with her when my passion is for you? The body is only the body.”

“You must be with her, Brom. The Starfish authority is quite clear on that. You are the one they know and trust. They want you to continue the role you have now, and they will make it worth your while to do it.”

“Worth my while?”

“They will promote you as the prime human envoy, and facilitate your access to me, when I recover in my own body. You will not be able to touch me, but you will see me and hear me via the phone.” She paused, and tears streamed down her face. “I want very much to have this continuing contact, such as it is, and I hope you do too. I love you.”

He hugged her and kissed her. “Yes, yes, Aliena! I will visit you as often as I can. I love you.”

“But you must also love my replacement. The success of the unveiling depends on that. The world must know that the three of you, man woman and child, are a family and in love.”

“I can’t promise to love her!”

She shook her head. “Brom, you must promise that.”

“I—can’t.”

She considered. “I am not thinking well at the moment, because of the damage the immune attack is doing. Maybe my idea is stupid, but it is all I have. I will write three things for you to do with her, that you did for me, that won my love and I think enabled yours.” She fetched a little notepad and wrote words on successive pages, then folded them and gave them to him. “Here they are. Do not read them until I am gone. Then do them. I will be in stasis a while, but when I emerge I will ask you whether you have done them, and I will be cool to you if you have not.” She took a shuddering breath. “Please don’t make me be that way; it is painful for me and for you.”

“I will do them!” he promised.

“I am tired, and my control is weakening. Please, make love to me now.”

He did, almost savagely. Her ailment was not of the body but of the mind. She obliged him eagerly, following wherever he led. “Ali ali ena!” he sang, and she responded with her love Note. It was wonderful, yet still tragic in its meaning: this was their next to last time.

“That was refreshing,” she said. “Orgasm reinvigorates my system, at least for a while.”

“Mine too.” Then he helped her put her face and hair in order, and to dress, and they went out to rejoin the others.

“The starfish have a show for us,” Johnson said. “According to a translator robot. A sort of preview of what tourists will eventually experience. It’s a roller coaster ride.”

“Roller coaster!” Maple exclaimed, bright eyed after her nap. She had a fair notion of what was what when it came to fun.

They took the boat to the roller coaster. There it was, an open carriage on wheels on a track leading into darkness.

“Ordinarily I’d be nervous about this,” Sam said. “But I trust the starfish.”

They boarded the carriage and strapped in. Brom and Aliena were in the front seats, with Maple between them. Next were the grandparents, and finally Sam and Martha.

The carriage started moving. A light came on, illuminating a steep ascent ahead. The carriage moved up it to a scary height, to Maple’s delight.

At the top the sun came out, much as it looked from Earth, though of course this was an animation. It showed the tracks descending into a lush valley surrounded by snow-covered mountains, with a river coursing through it. The scene was so lovely that it had to be an artist’s conception, but it was nevertheless quite realistic. It was as if they really were on this landscape.

“This is a representation of our home planet,” Aliena said. She made a moue. “Idealized. It’s not nearly so neat or clean in person. Cleanliness can interfere with efficiency.”

“It’s lovely,” Rebecca said.

Aliena smiled, and Brom realized that she appreciated the compliment despite having disparaged the view. She had become more human than starfish.

The carriage started down, gaining velocity as it zoomed into the valley. “Oooo!” Maple cried, loving it. They passed through extensive fields of what might be corn; this was an agricultural section. Sheep-like animals grazed; they were not eating the corn stalks, but the weeds around and under them. That seemed odd.

“The animals have starfish brains,” Aliena explained. “They are tending the crop, not eating it.”

“Sheep,” Maple said, delighted.

They rushed into what appeared to be a town, though there were no access roads, just tall cylindrical buildings. Barges floated between the structures, carrying barrels.

“Anti-gravity, as you prefer to call it,” Aliena said. “Actually magnetic repulsion, in this case. That saves on transport costs.

“Why build highways when you can float,” Johnson asked rhetorically. “Will that be another gift for Earth?”

“Yes.”

“I am not seeing what Earth can offer in return that would even begin to approach the value of such a gift.”

“We seek nothing physical. The complications of transporting it a hundred light years would be prohibitive, despite efficient management. But information, such as the genetic details of your biology, can be communicated instantly. Our scientists are enraptured. We also appreciate your imaginative literature, your fantasy narratives; they can be very diverting, especially as insights into your culture. And of course your music; music is fundamental to our nature.”

Now Brom saw what appeared to be a floating pond: water in a translucent container, drifting toward the city.

“Tourists in their sea forms,” Aliena said. “It saves the bother of occupying land based animals.”

The carriage swung around a curve at amazing speed, but they did not feel any impart. “Partial stasis,” Aliena said. “It nullifies the effects of acceleration and enables faster motion.”

They zoomed along just above the river, no tracks visible; evidently they were merely for show, until the tourists became accustomed to the real case: anti-gravity, or whatever.

The tour continued, finishing where it had started, the tracks reappearing. Now a speaker in the carriage spoke. “Did you enjoy the ride, Maple?”

“Yes!”

“Then here is a gift for you, in memory of it.” A panel opened and a pink starfish doll appeared.

Maple shrieked with delight and snatched it up. It was evidently a kind of toy, but an unusual one. It made a faint keening sound, as of delight with her company. It curled its rays around her as she hugged it close. It was a huggable doll.

“What do you say?” Aliena gently asked her daughter.

“Thank you!”

They got out of the carriage, Maple clinging to the doll. “That was an interesting experience,” Rebecca said.

“It will be improved for the Earth tourists, after the Unveiling,” Aliena said. “We want them to think well of us, and not resent our intrusion in their stellar system.”

The transport boat took them to a fancy restaurant where polite robot servitors catered to their every culinary desire, including chocolate chip ice cream for Maple.

“The tourists will absolutely love this,” Johnson said as he sipped his cognac.

They watched a pleasant family show with something for every one, ranging from dancing bears to dancing women with translucent skirts. Then they turned in for the night, Maple with the grandparents.

“Give me something to remember,” Aliena told him as she stripped.

Brom tried, but the knowledge that this was the last one choked him up. “Oh, Aliena, I would give anything to keep you with me!”

“I wish I could have remained. But remember, you will be having sex as usual, with this same body, and in time new love. There is no fault in the replacement; she will be much like me, only less experienced in human ways. It has to be.”

Brom put his face in his pillow and sobbed. She patted him on the back, unable to console him in this respect.

They slept embraced. Aliena was tired, and had at last yielded to her fatigue. She took comfort in his nearness, and he was glad and sad to provide it.

In the morning they had a fine breakfast, and Aliena was especially solicitous to her daughter. “Today I will change,” she said. “I will become a starfish, like the one you hold. I hope you will still love me, as I love you.”

“Yes,” Maple agreed tearfully. Brom was not certain how much she really understood, and not sure how much he wanted her to.

“Dad and Grandpa and Grandma love you too, and they will all be with you. Try to behave, because this is hard on them too.”

“Yes,” Maple agreed, her tears unabated. She understood too much.

“I understand they have a fine playground with tame animals,” Johnson told her. “We must go see it.” He took Maple’s hand.

“We’ll all go,” Rebecca said, glancing at Sam and Martha, whose duties were in abatement during the surgery.

“I will not be with you,” Aliena said, kissing them each in turn, including Sam and Martha, whose traditional impassivity was evidently under a strain. “I must depart now for the surgery. But Brom—if you will come with me, I would like your comfort.”

“Oh, Aliena, I know nothing about brain surgery!” Brom protested. “And the thought of you being replaced still breaks me up. I don’t think I can handle it. I would only be in the way.”

A tear came to her eye. “Please. It is the last occasion for me to touch you.”

“I will come,” he agreed, his own vision blurring.

“The surgery is immediate,” Ching said. “Most of it will be done by the Machine. I am largely advisory, these being alien brains. They simply need to verify the proper connections to the human brain stem, and be assured that the host is undamaged.”

They entered another chamber. Aliena used a separate alcove for natural functions, wiped the makeup off her face, then sat on a kind of couch. Padded bands circled her arms, legs, and torso to hold her in place. She extended her right hand to Brom, who sat in his own seat beside her.

“Farewell, beloved,” she said with one last tear. Then a mechanism descended to enclose her head. The Machine Doctor was taking over.

“Oh, Aliena!” Brom moaned. He couldn’t help it. He wasn’t sure she could still hear him, so her lifted her hand and kissed it. “I love you!”

Her hand gently squeezed his hand. She had heard.

The surgery proceeded. Brom had no idea exactly that they were doing, and no desire no find out. All he cared about was Aliena’s hand in his. Every so often he squeezed it reassuringly, more to remind her that he was there than anything else, and it squeezed him back. They remained in touch, and that was vastly more important right now than the lovemaking had been before.

Then her hand clenched briefly on his, and relaxed. He squeezed, but there was no response, and he knew she was gone.

The work continued, but Brom had no stomach for it. He got up and blundered toward the exit, blinded by tears.

“Easy,” Johnson said in his ear. “We’ve got you.”

They were both there, Johnson and Rebecca. They must have left Maple with Sam and Martha, who were surely taking good care of her. They took Brom’s two arms and guided him back to the suite. “Thank you,” he said brokenly.

“We love her too,” Rebecca said. “We loved Becky, but Aliena was a worthy replacement and we love her like another daughter. We grieve with you.”

Brom turned to her and wept into her shoulder. She held him, understanding.

“We know how hard this is,” Johnson said after a bit. “But we know also that the forms must be maintained. Officially there will be no change; you remain married to the body, weird as it is to put it that way. We must mask our grief and rejoin the others.”

“Yes,” Brom said, laboring to recover equilibrium. “You know, it was not my idea to recruit you; it was Aliena’s. But I am supremely glad she did.”

“So are we,” Rebecca said. “She returned light to our bleak lives.”

“And to mine,” he agreed. “Now we shall have to deal with the other.”

“We must give her a fair chance,” Johnson said. “Are you up to it, Brom?”

“The external forms, yes. Aliena asked me to do that, and I must. Sex? Maybe. Love? No.”

“How do you think Maple will be?”

“I fear to inquire.”

“So do we. We know about losing a daughter. We don’t know about losing a mother, that young. Yet we’re supposed to be a family, with her at the center. For the Unveiling.”

“The show must go on,” Brom said bitterly.

“It must,” Johnson agreed.

They came to the playground. Sam and Martha stood like indulging parents, watching Maple meet the animals. She seemed happy enough. But when she saw the returning party, she burst into tears. She knew.

Brom picked her up. At least he still had this much of Aliena.

Later, Dr. Ching and his assistant returned. “The operations were a success,” Ching reported. “Both parties survive. Both will be kept in partial stasis for a week to recover from the necessary crudities of the surgeries. Awakening Day is thus one week hence. We may divert ourselves as we choose.” He paused, “Or we may elect to spend part or all of it in stasis ourselves. Do we have a preference?”

Brom exchanged looks with the others. A week of bleakness? No entertainments would suffice. “All of it in stasis,” he said. The others nodded agreement.

They returned to the suite and settled in easy chairs. There was no need to make the request for stasis; the robots monitored them unobtrusively but constantly.

Brom focused on his watch. The date abruptly jumped forward a week. “We’re done,” he said. He felt unchanged, but was satisfied it had happened.

Ching consulted with his phone. “There may be a problem with Aliena,” he said. “She has awakened but is non-responsive.”

“Take me to her,” Brom said, alarmed.

The party was guided to another section of the ship. There was a transparent wall, like that of an aquarium. Beyond it, on the white sand, was a man-sized pink starfish. That was Aliena in her natural body.

Brom put his hands against the wall and stared. He had known this was her nature, but it was different seeing it directly. She was alive; that was what counted. But now the full alieness of her was brutally apparent. Had he loved this?

Yes, damn it, he had. He still did. It was her mind he had come to know, not merely her lovely body. That mind was still there. Unless something was seriously wrong.

Could she be waiting on him? To see whether he would be revolted by the reality? Unwilling to go about her normal business until she knew? It seemed likely.

He gazed at her and sang. “Ali ali ena, ali ali ena.”

The starfish twitched. Then a sound came, either through the wall or via a speaker. It was her love Note. They sang together, in their special fashion. “Ali ali ali ali ali ali ena!”

Sick with relief, Brom sank down against the wall. The starfish moved to it on her side, traveling on myriad tiny feelers, lifting a ray to touch the wall. He put his hand there to meet hers, as close as was feasible. They were together to the extent possible.

Maple came. “Mommy?” she asked.

The ray touched the wall by the child. Maple put out her little hand, and the ray touched opposite it. They, too, had reunited.

Then the starfish moved away. “She will feed and exercise, then return to stasis,” Ching said. “I understand that she has little interest in routine things at the moment. She misses you as you miss her.”

Then it was time to meet the replacement. She awaited them at their suite, where Ching brought her. She looked exactly like Aliena, except for the bandage on her head.

Maple shrank away from her.

“I recognize all of you from the background package,” she said, sounding just like Aliena. “I am the replacement.”

There was a silence. None of them seemed certain how to respond to her. It was supremely awkward.

“Please,” she said. “I am alone in a very strange realm, with a formidable job to do, among those who wish I were someone else. I can handle the physical and intellectual challenges, but I understand that I also need emotion. I think I should cry, but as yet I lack the connections to convert my feeling to this body’s expression. I need your help. How may I obtain it?”

That shamed them all. “We have to give her a chance,” Johnson said. “Just as we did Aliena.”

“We were so concerned about our own reactions to her,” Rebecca said, “that we never thought about her reactions to us. We are a group in our own realm; she is alone.”

“We apologize,” Brom said.

“There is no need,” the creature in Aliena’s body said. “Just guide me. This relationship is a shell masking the reality that we are strangers. I am a rapid study, a competent linguist, and practical. But I can’t do it alone.”

Brom saw the truth of that. Aliena had been less competent in language, initially, and not always entirely practical. This organism clearly could handle the role. She was his new wife, and Maple’s new mother. But how could he love her?

“It is like a wife dying, and the man remarries,” Johnson said. “No one is happy, but all must do their part.”

Only in this case even the husband was isolated from her. How could he reassure her, when inside he resented her presence in lieu of his beloved?

Maple visibly nerved herself. “I can cry. Pick me up.”

The body reached for her, took hold, and picked her up, carefully.

“Like this.” Maple burst into tears.

At first the woman looked surprised; she did have that emotion zeroed in. Then slowly her expression changed. Tears formed and rolled down her face. She was crying. She was indeed a quick study. She held Maple close, and Maple accepted it. The child was leading the way.

Suddenly Brom remembered the instructions Aliena had given him. They might be his salvation. He fished for the folded papers in his pocket and opened them out.

NAME HER.

“Aliena said to name her,” he said. “I think she means the way I named Aliena herself, privately, not her official designation. I have no idea what name would do.”

“She’s a starfish,” Maple said, recovering rapidly from her tears as children did. “Star.”

Brom was glad to agree. It wasn’t elegant, but it fit. “Star.”

“Star,” the woman said, mirroring the child’s recovery. “Thank you.” She set Maple down.

Brom looked at the second paper. GIVE HER A SONG.

“A song,” he said. “As I had with Aliena, but different. Again, I have no idea.”

“I do, perhaps,” Johnson said. “I remember an old, old song about a star. Well, not really about a star, but it was in the refrain. It was actually about death, but Becky liked it. From perhaps imperfect memory: ‘Dig my grave both deep and narrow, Make my coffin long and strong.’ Then ‘Two two to my head, two two to my knee, two two to carry me along.’ And the finale. ‘My soul’s going to shine like a star, my soul’s going to shine like a star, my soul’s going to shine like a star, for I’m bound for to heaven when I’m gone.’”

“I don’t know,” Brom said. “Depends on the tune. Can you sing it, or at least the part about the star?”

“I can try.” Johnson sang the words. Rebecca joined in, remembering it, singing with greater clarity. There was a certain quality of feeling to the melody and words that fit the present mood.

Star sang it after them, her voice perfect. The final “Star” was a high note, standing out from the others with sudden authority.

“I believe it will do,” Brom said, impressed. “That will be our song.”

“I feel its emotion,” Star said. “Thank you, Mr. Smythe.”

“Call me Johnson. I am your host’s father.”

“No, dear,” Rebecca said. “She must call you Dad. And me Mom. We’re part of the shell too.”

“I will do that,” Star said.

“And we will call you Star, as we would our daughter,” Johnson agreed.

Brom felt a surge of appreciation for their supportive contribution. They were making it significantly easier.

He looked at the third note. TAKE HER TO THE BEACH.

“Oh, my,” he said, taken aback.

“The beach is the edge of water?” Star asked alertly.

“Yes. The sea.”

“We have an attraction to the sea, for we are sea creatures. It arouses our deepest emotions.”

“Ours too, sometimes,” Brom agreed.

“What did you do there?”

Brom took a deep breath. “We made love.”

She sorted through her vocabulary. “You mated?”

“Yes.”

“She is telling us to mate?”

“Yes.”

Star considered briefly. “May we postpone that discussion for a more convenient time?”

“Yes!” he agreed gratefully.

“I believe we should spend some time together, getting familiar with each other, since we are supposed to be married.” Star said. “I have been given comprehensive background information, but that is not necessarily the same as personal experience. There are nuances. Do you concur?”

“Yes.”

Now she smiled. “Aliena and I are both starfish, as you put it, but there are differences. She is more giving; I am more assertive. If this annoys you, tell me and I will stifle it. I do not wish to be offensive.”

“Be yourself. I will accommodate.”

“Thank you. We should go to Earth now.”

“On our way,” Sam said.

They proceeded to the shuttle to the Wheel, thence to Earth, and the waiting train. Dr. Ching and his assistant bid them farewell, reducing their party to seven. The train moved out.

“Do the two of you wish to be alone now?” Johnson asked.

“No,” Brom and Star said almost together. Then Brom laughed.

“You and I are quite different, yet superficially similar in our human forms,” Star said. “This coincidental joint reaction is a seeming point of similarity. Is this humorous?”

“Humor is difficult to define,” Brom said. “But yes, when pure coincidence has the semblance of coordination, we can find that funny, and we laugh.”

“Teach me to laugh.”

“To do that naturally, may be impossible. Maybe if you emulate me when I laugh, or any of the others, even if you don’t understand why, you can in time pick up on its nature. Humor is a bit like brain surgery: if you stir your finger in it too long, it suffers.”

Now Johnson laughed. “Nice analogy!”

Then Brom and Johnson both looked at Star. She had laughed with Johnson.

“You weren’t fooling about being a quick study,” Johnson told her.

“It is necessary for the role I am assigned to play. There is not a great deal of time for assimilation.”

Brom smiled, and Star smiled with him. “I fear you will find we pure humans to be slow witted.”

“Yes.”

“Aliena never gave us that impression. As a general rule, it is not smart to be too obviously smarter than your companions. Human beings are perhaps undeservedly proud of their supposed wit.”

“I thank you for that insight. I will reform.”

Later Brom was to realize that never again did Star say or imply that he was in any way slow compared to her. She learned such things so rapidly that it seemed as if she had always known them. It bothered him to acknowledge it, but she really was smarter than Aliena.

“We have a fair amount of time on the train before we reach the crowded human population,” Brom said. “We don’t have stasis here, yet. This is the time for us to become better acquainted. It may become pretty personal at times. Is there anything we can do or say to make you feel more comfortable with us or this situation?”

“Yes,” Star said. “I understand from the record that an attempt was made to kill Aliena. That makes me nervous.”

“Such an attempt was made,” Sam said. “There may be others, especially after the Unveiling. Martha and I are here to protect you from such threats, but we can’t guarantee your safety absolutely.”

“I believe I need a gun.”

“That may not be wise. A gun in inexpert hands can be more dangerous to its owner than to anyone else.”

“Teach me to be expert.”

“This is not something that can be done in one hour.”

Now Star smiled. “If I may borrow idiom from my background vocabulary, wanna bet?”

“You are really interested?”

“Yes. I believe it is a necessary precaution.”

Sam’s hand hardly flickered, but now there was a gun in it. “First you need to be sure of hitting what you aim at, and to know when to shoot. Knowing when is as important as knowing how. I will set up a target.” He walked to the far side of the coach and set up an ordinary chair, facing away. “Let’s assume this is an enemy soldier about to mow us all down with an automatic weapon. We must take him out before he takes us out.” He walked away from the chair, then suddenly whirled and fired. A red spot appeared in the middle of the back of the chair. “This is a paint gun, to be sure no one gets hurt, but when you are ready we will provide you with a real one. Take it and shoot at the chair. Don’t be concerned if you miss it; you will need to zero in your reflexes at first.” He handed the gun to Star.

She aimed it at the chair and fired. She missed, splattering the floor before it.

“May I try again?”

“Try as many times as you want. It’s a learning experience.”

She aimed again, this time missing too high. She fired a third time, and caught the edge of the chair. The fourth shot caught it dead center.

Then she faced away from it, suddenly whirled, and fired again. The shot was not a perfect center, but it did catch the chair.

Sam nodded, impressed. “We shall order a gun for you. You will need to go to a firing range and try out several pistols, but I suspect you will be satisfied. Next lesson: concealed carry. We will make a demonstration. Martha?”

“Paint gun ready,” she said, standing.

“Let’s assume a male terrorist is coming for you,” Sam told Star. “You are a lovely young woman. Even if he means to kill you, chances are 50-50 he will want to rape you first.”

“Rape,” Star said, as if reading in a dictionary. “The involuntary knowledge of a women.”

“Forcible sex,” Sam clarified. “He will want to hold you down and ram his penis into your vagina.”

“Yes.” She did not seem to view this with horror, merely as a thing to understand, like avoiding a falling branch.

Sam turned to Brom. “Pretend to be about to rape Martha.”

Brom advanced on Martha. He reached out to push her. She fell back, landing on the floor, her legs lifting so that he saw all the way between them under her skirt. She wore no panties! Jolted, he nevertheless started to drop down on her.

There was a splat on his chest. A red dab of paint was there, right where his heart would be.

“You’re dead,” Sam said as Martha jumped nimbly to her feet.

“I—she--no panties?”

Martha laughed, and Star laughed with her. Martha lifted her skirt and snapped the material beneath it. “Flesh colored, with shading and a line down the middle. You did not see what you thought you saw. But it made you hesitate long enough for me to get my gun.”

“The gun,” Brom said doggedly. “I never saw it.”

Martha lifted one leg and took off her stylish feminine shoe. She aimed the shoe at the distant target and a new blot appeared there. It was a gun!

“I am impressed,” Star said.

Martha handed the shoe to her. “We call it the gun-shoe, a play on gumshoe. We don’t advertise it to the public.”

Star aimed at the target, and hit it. “I want a shoe like this.”

“You shall have it,” Sam said. “And similar panties too, if you want them.”

“The sight of a woman’s cleft incites a man to lust,” Star said, getting it straight. “This distracts him from the weapon.”

“Exactly. Any man would pause the way Brom did. It’s a fine last-ditch defense. But with luck you will never have to use it; we mean to protect you from any such attack.”

“I am reassured. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. We don’t often get to make such a demonstration.”

They sat down again. “There is a name in my memory file whose relevance I am not certain of,” Star said. “Lucy.”

“My former girlfriend,” Brom said. “Past history.”

“That name is surely there for a reason,” Star said. “Aliena put it there. Will you clarify that reason?”

Brom grimaced, but obliged. “She was a smart, assertive woman, a firm atheist, and she carried a gun for the same reason you will: no man was going to molest her. She was not averse to sex; in fact she had a high libido and was sexually aggressive. I must admit that I liked that about her. But she died, I fear deliberately, because of my doubt about committing. That is my legacy of guilt. Thereafter I was emotionally isolated until Aliena came into my life.”

“I am surprised. There are ways in which I resemble Lucy, despite existing three hundred years before her time.”

This was interesting. “How so?”

“This is more background than perhaps you need. I do not wish to bore you.”

“Bore us,” Brom said with a smile. He found himself warming to her.

“Aliena and I were brood mates, what you might call sisters, two of hundreds. We were quite different in personality, yet were friends. I was smart and assertive; she was feeling and giving. We complemented each other. We had some naughty adventures that got us both in trouble.”

Brom closed his eyes, forming a mental picture, only with Star and Aliena as two pretty human girls in a boarding school. After classes and the evening meal they would sneak out to explore the neighborhood, hiding from others so they would not be reported. Once they went swimming in a private pool and were almost caught, but it was a great adventure. Another time they visited a boy’s dormitory and met a handsome young man. Star took an interest in him, and kissed him before they fled. Things developed, and they made a date to mate. That was a serious matter, because this man was from a brood that was not proper for mating with their own brood. But they were in lust and intended to do it. They set the date and place. Aliena nervously accompanied her friend, serving as a lookout to prevent any dangerous observation.

But the man did not come. Disappointed they finally returned to their own dorm. Only later did they get the news that he had been caught in their neighborhood by a predator and killed. That was why he had not made the date.

Star lost it. Distraught by her loss and survivor’s guilt, she committed virtual suicide by volunteering for the first great space mission then being formulated. This was certain banishment, because the ship was unlikely ever to return, and if it did, centuries would have passed on the home planet. More likely it was death, for space was dangerous and the mission to contact another sapient species was treacherous. The ship itself could be destroyed, with its minions in stasis never returning to awareness before being extinguished. It was the kind of mission suitable for a person who had no reason to remain in her own culture.

And Aliena volunteered also, simply in support of her friend. Aliena was social and feeling and physically esthetic and could readily have found a worthwhile situation at home, and a suitable male to breed with. But she wanted to share her friend’s fate, whatever it might be. Star was not an emotional person, but this moved her profoundly. It was a concluding irony that she had been slated to become Coordinator, to run the ship during the alien contact, while Aliena had been chosen to be the Envoy, to dwell among the aliens and acquaint them with her people and culture. Now they were reversed, each in a position she was not the best qualified for.

“Now I appreciate why Aliena designated me to succeed her,” Star concluded. “If she could not have her male, she wanted me to have him. And perhaps she is correct: however less qualified I may be by the listings, there are social factors that compensate. You, Brom, lost your girlfriend, perhaps being part of the chain of causation that killed her. I suffered loss of my boyfriend, with similar guilt. Lucy had personality traits that echo mine; you might find me compatible. I know you would not choose me on your own, but perhaps you will respect Aliena’s choice. I will do my best to satisfy you. I know I can do that intellectually and sexually; I am uncertain about socially and emotionally.”

Brom was having difficulty digesting this. “Your intellect is far beyond mine and I’m not hot for you sexually. Frankly I don’t see myself falling love with you as I did with Aliena.”

“Perhaps it is time to have that discussion about mating.”

“Maybe now it’s time for us to leave you two alone,” Johnson said.

“Give us fifteen minutes, please,” Star told him. “Thereafter our understanding will be complete.”

“I don’t want that time,” Brom protested.

“Give her a chance,” Johnson reminded him. The grandparents carried Maple, who had fallen asleep, to a bedroom. Sam and Martha faded out.

Brom rounded on Star. “I know you are a stranger in a strange land, and need support, but you are pushing it. Here on Earth we do not generally dive into sex or love incidentally.”

“Nor do we,” she said, approaching him. “In fact we do not have love relationships, only compatible matings. But this is an extraordinary situation, with the fate of worlds in the balance. We must perform. We can not afford to dislike each other. I am not more eager to be with you than you are with me, but neither of us has a choice. We are like actors in a play, compelled to put on a show regardless of our private sentiments. I wish Aliena could have remained with you; I know she truly joyed in your company. She recognized the harsh reality. She left a message for me too, which was this: ‘The first child was mine; the second must be yours.’ I must mate with you, sooner or later. It seems more efficient to establish the rules of the game at the outset, and have no further friction about it. Embrace me.”

“Star, this is preposterous!”

She put her arms about him. “I would prefer that you do it, but if you do not, then I must do it. We do not have time for diffidence. Kiss me.”

“Star--”

She kissed him. She was phenomenally good at it; she must have studied the form. He couldn’t help responding.

She ended the kiss and drew her head back slightly. “Mate me.”

Brom wanted to resist, but it was apparent she had his number. She occupied the body of the woman he loved, and knew how to use it. His member was rampant. He had never believed that there was such a thing as seduction by force, but it was apparent that she was capable of it. She was the dominant personality. He was over-matched.

What was it Sam had said when Brom had run afoul of Aliena? Complete utter capitulation.

“Star, please, I beg you, no. I concede you the victory; you can seduce me when you choose. But not this way. Let it come more naturally. I promise I will do it before long. Just not right now, so soon after I lost Aliena. I would feel degraded.”

“At the beach?”

“Yes.” There, he had committed.

“Thank you.” She let him go.

He sank into a chair, relieved. “Thank you.”

“I did not like doing that,” she said. “I prefer your way.”

“My way probably wouldn’t work. It takes time to get over love, and I love Aliena. We don’t have that time. We shall have to be a public family, and lovers. Maybe, in time, love will come, unrushed.”

“I will learn it from you, when you find it.”

“Maybe so,” he agreed wryly.

“Now may I dissolve, before the others return?”

He did not pretend to misunderstand. “Come here, Star. Sit on my lap. Dissolve. We all need to let go sometimes.”

She came and sat on his lap, and he put his arms around her. Then she curled up, put her face against his chest, and dissolved into tears, sobbing softly. He knew this was not an act, but a genuine surrender. She depended on him to comfort her when the going became too hard. In the confused depths of a complicated situation, he liked that. She was after all a woman.

And, holding her like this, he knew that he could, in time, love her. He would never lose his love for Aliena, or for that matter, Lucy, but he could love Star too. She desperately needed his support, and yes, his love, and it was bound to come. Not today, not next week, but in time.

Her sobbing eased. She lifted her head and wiped off her face with her hand. “Thank you. I needed that.” She was a quick study even in this respect.

He kissed her. It was not a conscious decision; he had not known he was going to do it. It had simply emerged from the moment.

When it ended, she looked at him with faint confusion. “I do not understand.”

“When you were busy being dominant, requiring me to perform, I resisted. When you let down your hair, so to speak, you reached me on another level. You are a person too, in a ferociously challenging situation. I respect that, but it also invokes my compassion and yes, perhaps, my dawning love. I kissed you because I wanted to. We are not there yet, by a long shot, but now I appreciate the potential.”

“I am grateful for that. I see already that you are a better male than the one I lost. I too see the potential, and hope it comes to be realized.”

The others returned. “We have an understanding,” Brom said before they could ask. “We can play the roles.”

“I am tired,” Star said. “I think I should sleep. But I will be unable to sleep alone. When I relax my control weakens and my horror of my situation dominates.” Then she caught herself. “I should not have said that.”

Johnson stepped in again. “You should not say that in public, Star. But we are not the public. We are Family. We try to be honest with each other. We can say things that we do not share outside. We would have as much trouble in a starfish body as you do in a human one. I think it would be claustrophobic and frightening.”

“Aliena could not sleep alone either,” Brom said. “I held her hand at night, every night.”

“If you would?” she asked.

Brom considered. “There could be awkwardness. You have the body of the woman I love, and with whom I have shared love many times. If I woke in the night and saw or felt that body I might be severely conflicted.”

“Whatever you want of this body you may have.”

“And that’s part of the conflict. I want to desire you knowing it’s you, and knowing that you wish it rather than merely obliging me. It was that way at first with Aliena too.”

“I think I do not properly understand that. As I said, the nuances of emotion do not come readily to me. That was Aliena’s strength. I will be guided by you.”

“And I don’t fully trust myself. There is a song ‘When I’m not near the one I love, I love the one I’m near.’ Men tend to be that way. I don’t want to be near you when I’m groggy or dreaming.”

“Please, I will be unable to sleep alone, and I ought to sleep. My brain is I believe similar to yours in this respect: during its downtime it consolidates experience and memories. My continued health depends on this.”

Rebecca stepped in. “Could you sleep with Maple? She is your host’s daughter, and should love to be with you instead of alone. Children too have issues with separation and night.”

“But she knows I am alien, and not her mother.”

“She knows her mother was similarly alien, and that the body is the same,” Rebecca said. “Why don’t we give it a try?”

They guided Star to a bedroom, and brought Maple, who remained sleepy. “Maple,” Rebecca said. “Star is nervous about darkness and does not want to be alone. Would you sleep with her, keeping her company as she sleeps?”

“Sure.”

Just like that. The child did understand this sort of thing.

Star lay down on the bed in her nightie, and Maple lay beside her. They held hands. In a moment both were asleep.

They dimmed the light, leaving just enough to see by if necessary, and closed the door.

“Thank you!” Brom said to Rebecca.

“It’s what grandmothers are for.”

“I know I’ll make it with Star in time. It’s just too soon, and meanwhile she’s an alluring stranger. I’m uncomfortable with that.”

“We do understand,” Johnson said. “We went through it with Aliena.”

“Actually we went through it with Becky,” Rebecca reminded him. “When she came down with the malady she became a stranger.”

“But Aliena turned out to be a worthy successor,” Johnson agreed. “As I’m sure Star will be. We’ll never stop loving the others, but we can love Star too.”

“As I loved Aliena, after Lucy,” Brom said. “I guess I do have similar experience.”

Johnson glanced at Sam. “You and Martha never comment.”

“We’re bodyguards,” Sam said. “We try to stay in the background. It is not smart to develop any personal attachment.”

“But to answer your question,” Martha said, “We did like Aliena. She was special. We’re glad she’s not really dead. But we do miss her.”

They settled down to an interactive computer game, then turned in themselves. Brom remained thankful for the support of all of them.

Thereafter Star and Maple were constantly together. They had bonded. One down, Brom thought. One to go.

In due course the train arrived at its hidden station, and they reentered the bustling global society. Star was openly intrigued by the sights, and that was all right, because she was taken for a tourist. The airplane flight too: “It is amazing what you can do without what you call anti-gravity,” she murmured.

“That gift alone will transform our society,” Brom said. “I remain amazed by starfish generosity.”

“We want you to be technologically parallel to us. It is easier for equals to interact fairly.”

“I think you are a better species than we are.”

She squeezed his hand. “We have had more time to mature.”

She had not debated him or been condescending. Instead she had been reassuring. He liked that.

Star slept beside him during the long flight, holding his hand. Maple slept on her other side, holding Star’s other hand. He liked that too. In fact, Star was a fully worthy replacement. He was coming to know her better during the long journey. She interacted well with the officials along the way, and the support staff. He knew that Sam and Martha, seated inconspicuously close by, approved of her.

But she wasn’t Aliena.

As they approached America, Star whispered in his ear. “How should I react to this other land?”

“You are nominally familiar with it,” he replied. “So it should be routine. You may be bored.”

“I will feign boredom.” And she did.

She inquired again as the limo delivered them home. “You should be delighted to be back at last, after a two week absence,” he said. “You can relax and let down your hair.”

Star did that literally. She caught Martha’s smile. “Did I misinterpret?”

“A little,” Brom said. “It is a figure of speech, meaning to be at ease, as is the case when you are home and out of public view.”

“Thank you.” Never again did she make an error of that nature.

The first day home they both relaxed. Star seemed to sleep almost as much as Maple, always with company, perhaps because her brain was still zeroing in on things that were routine to Brom, like the layout of the house, schedule of meals, and TV shows. The morning of the second day she dressed out for the exercise run, as rigorous about maintaining the body as Aliena had been. Brom ran with her, privately noting that she was every bit as lovely in motion as Aliena, though that was hardly a surprise.

In the afternoon she asked to meet the neighbors. The grandparents took Maple out for ice cream, so it was just the two of them, with Sam nearby. They crossed yards to knock on Mrs. Green’s door. “Please, we are your neighbors,” Star said.

“Of course, dear,” Mrs. Green said. “Come in; I’m glad to have company.”

“I have been ill,” Star said.

“I know, dear.”

“It was encephalitis. My body attacked my brain. I suffered hallucinations and other complications. Finally they had to do surgery; that was why I was away. It is healing now, with continuing medication, but I may have misplaced some memories.” She smiled. “Maybe they replaced my brain.”

Mrs. Green laughed. “Oh, I hope they didn’t go that far, dear.”

“Since the surgery, I am more comfortable being called Star. It is perhaps a signal of my new outlook.”

“Star,” Mrs. Green agreed tolerantly.

They talked, comparing memories. Brom knew that Star was getting her knowledge of Mrs. Green straight, in the guise of refreshing foggy memories. She was also incidentally charming the older woman. Aliena had been friends with Mrs. Green; now so was Star.

Then Star got serious. “As you know, I am from very far away. I have been learning your American culture so that in due course I can be an effective Envoy representing my people. This contact is important to both our cultures. In about six months we shall have what we call the Unveiling, wherein I will be officially presented to the public. It will be a rather fancy occasion. News reporters may come to the neighborhood to learn more.”

“Paparazzi,” Mrs. Green said knowingly. “They’re obnoxious.”

“So I understand. I want you to know that you have no need to share any information with them if they try to question you about me. But you are free to say whatever you want; I will have no secrets.” She glanced at Brom suggestively. “At least not of that nature. Our windows are shaded.”

Mrs. Green laughed. “Fair warning, Star.” They hugged as Brom and Star departed.

It was similar with the Roberts on the other side. Star was making sure they were prepared, and cementing their friendship. She was a born diplomat, by no coincidence.

Each second morning they ran, and Brom could not help noticing what a fit woman she was, in shorts and halter with her air in a ponytail, the bandage resembling a sweatband. Just like Aliena, of course, yet her expression and carriage differed, subtly. He tried to identify exactly what the difference was, for his work on cartoons, but it eluded him.

Then, seemingly suddenly, it was a week. “Brom,” she said earnestly. “The beach.”

Was he ready? Did it matter? He had agreed. In the week, coming to know her as he had come to know Aliena, he had built up a solid core of respect. She might be alien, but she was some woman. “I guess it is time,” he agreed, feeling guilty for looking forward to it.

They made a picnic excursion of it, with three cars: the two of them in his car, Sam and Martha in theirs, and the Smythes with Maple in theirs. They all knew what this meant.

“Brom,” she said softly as she rode beside him. She knew how to drive, but deferred to him. “We can wear suits and swim if you prefer.”

“But that would mean—no singing.”

“I made you agree to do this. That was unkind, and I regret it. I will not hold you to it.”

He shook his head. “I made a deal and I’ll honor it. We both know we have to do it sometime. Aliena won’t speak to me again if I don’t.”

“You may pretend I am her, if you wish.”

“That would not be fair to you, Star. But tell me: is it something you really want to do, or are you too bound by Aliena’s wish?”

“It is both.”

That set him back slightly. “We must maintain the semblance of the happy marriage that Aliena and I had. We both know that. That includes sex. But that does not require you to pretend to like it.”

“I have never deceived you, and never will. I am aware of the distinction between the shell and the reality. I know that you love Aliena and not me. But you have been supportive and decent throughout, and I am learning to like you. I have not yet learned love, but am trying. Aliena is reticent; I am not. I would like to have this interaction with you, if you allowed it. I would come into your bed at night, if you allowed it. I would seduce you. But I do not want to annoy you by being too forward.”

He knew she was telling the truth. Suddenly he was sorely tempted, but he held himself back. “Let’s go to the beach and see what happens. If you wish to do it then, tell me, and I will. Then later we can consider how we both feel about it.”

“That is fair,” she agreed.

The three cars pulled up at the beach. It was a hot summer day, and there were a number of people there. Star stared, enraptured. “Oh! I did not know it would be so compelling!”

Sam drew Brom aside. “There is a private inlet adjacent to this public beach. We have reserved it, and will guard it. No one is there. Go.”

“Maple, let’s go find some cotton candy,” Johnson said, picking the child up. “We’ll join them in a little while.”

“Yes!” Star cried, running toward it, fully clothed.

Brom followed, and soon they were at the private beach. Star tore off her clothing and ran naked to the water, exactly as Aliena had. The sight of her bouncing nude body turned him on, as before. Brom stripped and ran after her.

“May we sing?” she asked breathlessly.

“My soul’s going to shine like a star,” he sang.

“Mate me!” She plunged into the water, singing her Note. She splashed down in the shallow surf.

He followed, and in a moment they were in the the throes of it, still singing together. “My soul’s going to shine like a STAR!” he concluded as he plunged into her and climaxed instantly. She climaxed with him, as Aliena had, overcome by the moment and the surging waves.

Then they collapsed together. They had done it, gloriously.

“And at home, now that our ice is broken?”

“Anytime,” he agreed.

“May I initiate?”

“Anytime,” he repeated. “When we are alone.”

“Thank you. I am I think more like Lucy than Aliena in this respect. I crave this intensity.”

And their relationship was similarly imperfect, because she wasn’t Aliena. That was awkward.

“I think I should not have mentioned Lucy.”

“No, no, it’s all right. Just please don’t do what she did in the end.”

“I will not. Now I think we should dress, before the others return.”

“Agreed.”

She kissed him. Then they got out of the water, went to the shower, cleaned off, and got into their swimsuits.

The others returned. Sam and Martha had of course observed everything, wherever they had been hiding, and the Smythe’s knew of it. None of them commented. It was a tacit conspiracy of silence, but all of them seemed pleased. They had evidently wanted him to make it with Star.

They played in the surf with Maple and had a wonderful ordinary time. But Star was on Brom’s mind. She was not Aliena, but she was a lot of fun. And that singing surf connection had been almost identical to the one with Aliena. It seemed to signal the same thing: the commencement of their sexual association. Well, it was time.

“I must learn to dance,” Star said as they drove home.

“Dance? Why?”

“When the Unveiling comes, I will need to dance with selected men as part of the promotion. I must do it well.”

“I think you will need more competent instruction than I can deliver. I’m strictly a duffer dancer.”

“I will obtain it.”

She did, and overnight, literally, became expert. It also turned out that she had not exaggerated her delight in sex; she openly seduced him daily. This was another difference from Aliena, who while always amenable had seldom initiated sex, but Brom found that he liked it. Star had also made sure to have effective contraception; she could not afford pregnancy at this time.

Meanwhile rumors were spreading that something big was in the offing. This was the result of careful government leaks, preparing the populace for the revelation to come. Brom knew that it was being done on a global scale. The cooperation of nations was unprecedented; none wanted to be left out of it.

Star talked with the neighbors again, starting with Mrs. Green. “As you know, I am to be an Envoy from a distant realm,” Star said carefully.

“Yes, and I’m sure you will be a good one.”

“I must tell you more about it, that I fear will disturb or repulse you.”

“Star, if it’s some scandal in your background, don’t tell me. I like you regardless.”

“No scandal. But I must ask you to keep it in confidence, until the Unveiling in three months.”

“You have my word.”

“My realm is on another planet circling another star. I am a true alien.”

“And you can breathe our air? I have trouble believing that.”

“My natural body could not breathe your air. Instead my brain was transplanted into this native body, which had lost its brain.”

Mrs. Green was reluctant to believe, but Brom confirmed it, and finally she accepted it. “It’s a good thing I know what a nice person you are, Star, or I would have serious concerns.”

“Yes. And those who don’t know me may fear the worst. There will be considerable additional security in this neighborhood, to protect me against potential assassins. If you prefer not to live in such a situation, the government will arrange to buy your house for a good price and help place you wherever else you might prefer.”

Mrs. Green shook her head. “I’ll take my chances here. But thanks for warning me.”

“I am glad you will stay. I need friends around me.”

“You’ve got one, dear.”

Brom remembered how Johnson had remarked that Becky had been pretty, Aliena beautiful, and Star took it to an art form. He wasn’t thinking just of physical appearance. Star absolutely charmed people.

One month before the Unveiling the global publicity barrage began in earnest. Contact with an alien stellar culture had been made, and the aliens were sending an Envoy. At first there was wide rejection, as people suspected it was a hoax. But as more detail came, an increasing number began to accept it. Maybe this was for real.

Star made a quiet global tour, taking Brom and Maple along. The way had been cleared in advance, and there was no publicity. An early stop was in Italy, and the Vatican: the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church.

They were ushered into a private office to see the pope himself. Brom held Maple on his lap as she hugged her starfish doll, looking around but silent, as she had learned to be. They were part of the background. He noted that Star was eerily lovely despite being quite conservatively dressed, without makeup, her hair plain. She looked much like a Catholic woman who had come to pray. An adorably dedicated one.

“As you know, Your Holiness, I am the Alien Envoy, to be Unveiled next month,” she said, and the pope nodded; he had of course been briefed. “My body is human, but my brain is that of a star-traveling starfish.” She smiled, and her beauty radiated. “I am called Star.”

The pope nodded noncommittally, waiting for her to pull the trigger; he was an old hand at this sort of thing. Folk frequently solicited favors of the Church, and some had significant power bases. Star’s intention was to enlist the Catholic Church’s cooperation after the Unveiling, or at least ensure its neutrality. It was a likely bastion of intolerance with respect to any alien visitation to Earth, that could be enormous mischief unless countered at the outset.

“I have come to request a significant favor of you, and to give you a small gift.”

“I am unlikely to grant a favor or accept a gift,” the pope said cautiously. But he knew that something huge was in the offing.

Star was unfazed. “We bring to Earth a number of gifts whose purpose is to advance Earthly technology and improve the comfort of human beings. Among these is what is popularly termed anti-gravity: the ability to virtually float without expending much if any power. The indications are that airlines, for example, could use this to decrease the weight of their planes and carry passengers far more efficiently. They will of course pay a licensing fee. There should be a good deal of money to be made from such adaptations. We wish to ensure that a fair share of such money is used for beneficial purposes, such as healing the sick and helping the poor to survive and even prosper. But my people are not conversant with the Earth economic pattern, so we prefer to enlist the assistance of those who are already committed to such good work. Such as the Catholic Church. Hence the favor: for you to arrange the appropriate distribution of a share of this money.”

“What amount are you thinking of?” the pope asked cautiously.

“Well, there are many channels, and this portion is relatively small, but should grow as time passes. Our expectation is that it would be about five billion dollars a year, to start.”

That signaled major league. “And what would be the restrictions? The strings?”

“No strings,” Star said. “We would not presume to try to tell you how to do what you understand so much better than we do.”

“I believe we could work something out,” the pope said. Brom was sure of that; five billion dollars a year could feed and medicate many needy people, who would be duly grateful to the Church.

“Thank you,” Star said sincerely. “Our representative will be in touch with yours. Now the gift.”

“No gift, please.”

“It is merely a song.”

“A song?”

Star sang what Brom knew was the pope’s favorite, because he had helped with the spot research: “Ave Maria.” She sang it in Latin, her bell-like tones making a breathtakingly lovely rendition.

The pope listened, clearly impressed. It was impossible for anyone to think that such a lovely person with such a wonderful voice could ever be associated with anything remotely evil. In fact she seemed more like an angel.

Then the pope raised his hand in a stop gesture. Star stopped in mid-note. He stood and walked to the door, gesturing them to follow. He led them through a labyrinth of passages until they came to a chamber like a small cathedral, where cleaning women were preparing it for the next service. He gestured for her to continue.

Star resumed singing exactly where she had left off. With the superior acoustics of this chamber the sound resounded, magnifying the effect. It was as if heaven was manifesting in this spot. The women paused to listen, impressed. Others came to stand at the periphery, similarly mesmerized. Brom realized that the pope had simply known that the song needed to be shared.

Star finished, and the listeners came out of their daze. “Thank you, my dear,” the pope said. “I do appreciate that gift.”

Brom knew that Star had accomplished her mission here. She had charmed the pope, and provided something he wanted. The Catholic Church was unlikely to oppose the starfish association. The pope surely understood her motivation, but he accepted it.

They went on to India, and China, and other centers of the great religions, where Star made similar presentations, concluding by singing their sacred songs beautifully in their own languages. There would surely be some religious objection to the starfish, but it was likely to be muted.

Star was a master diplomat. Yet when alone with Brom, she was an uncertain woman, wanting his reassurance. This did not seem to be an act; she truly needed him, as Aliena had. The act was her professionalism; she was good at it, but did not fully trust her own judgment. Maybe it was that he, as a human being, had the appropriate perspective. Of course he supported her fully; that was really his job. If only it could have been Aliena!

Two weeks before the Unveiling, the starfish mother-ship arrived and took up orbit around the moon. Now everyone believed, but many were seriously alarmed. Were the aliens coming as friends, or on a mission of conquest? Similar concerns played our around the world.

One week before unveiling, the announcement was made: the Alien Envoy had arrived. Because she could not live in Earth’s atmosphere, her brain had been transplanted into a human host. She had learned Earth’s ways and respected them.

The buildup was enormous, and that made Brom nervous. “I have to say I like the life we have had together,” he told Star. “You’re a lot of fun. But you’re going to be phenomenally busy as Interplanetary Envoy.”

“So are you,” she said. “You will be with me throughout, and Maple too. I need your support as part of the presentation, but also personally.”

That had been evident all along. “You have it.”

“Thank you.”

As if he was doing her a personal favor. Did she think he was not fully committed?

That night, alone together, she made passionate love to him, then broached her concern. “I am still not Aliena.”

And there it was. “Star, you’re great, you’re doing a perfect job, and I delight in your success and your company. But I do love Aliena.”

“I would not have it otherwise.”

Then a phenomenal idea burst upon him. “Maybe I could rejoin her—by transplanting into a Starfish host!”

She considered. “This is possible. If this is what you truly desire, I will not oppose it.”

“I’ll talk to her, when I finally get to see her again, after six months apart.” For there had been no trip to the starship, by Aliena’s design. She wanted him to work it out with Star.

“Talk to her,” she agreed.

Something was bothering her, but he was not figuring it out and doubted that he could ask her. “Thanks, Star. You’re great!”

“I support you as you support me.”

The day of the Unveiling finally came. They traveled to the White House as a party of seven: Star, Brom, Maple, the grandparents, and the guardians. The president himself made the announcement, and showed Star off on a giant stage covered by a myriad cameras that broadcast it to the world. Star was resplendent in an evening gown, with a diamond necklace and lesser gems sparkling in her hair. She was so beautiful that there was a collective murmur of awe.

Then she spoke. “It is true. I am an alien creature in a human host, because I could not survive on Earth in my own body. I come from a planet a hundred light years away, and I look like a starfish. Hence my name, here: Star. I have been living here for more than two years, learning the culture.” Technically it had been only six months, but they had agreed that the exchange of alien brains would not be mentioned; her term officially commenced with the arrival of Aliena. No one would care anyway, apart from Brom.

“I married a local man, and we have a child,” Star continued, bringing Brom and Maple to the stage. “They are completely human; only my brain is alien.” She went on to describe the benefits that the starfish were bringing to Earth. “We proffer three gifts, at first: accelerated propulsion for your space vessels so that you may come to travel between the stars as we do. Virtual Antigravity, that should facilitate your airplane flights and construction. And Stasis, which you may think of an instant freezing and thawing, though it is not cold, that can enable you to pass time in a seeming moment.”

She let that sink in, and the president nodded affirmatively. These were remarkable gifts. Then: “To help you get to know me better, there will be a lottery to select one man for a date with me.” She smiled. “This is only for show; my husband might object we became too friendly. Another lottery will select seventeen people, male, female, and child, to accompany our little family of three on a tourist excursion to the Starfish mother ship, where we will be suitably entertained. This event will illustrate the three gifts, as the shuttle into space will have greatly increased power, the antigravity will make it far lighter, and the stasis will make the journey seem instantaneous. You will get into the shuttle here, and get off it at the Starship immediately, as far as you are aware. That will be the first of many, as we do this with the other cultures of Earth. We want you to become familiar with the Starfish, and comfortable with our association, and to trust the new technology by experiencing it. Now I will sing my song.” And she sang the refrain of “My soul’s going to shine like a star,” beautifully. The Tabernacle Choir was not present, despite the president’s notion, but her perfect voice needed no assistance.

There was more, but that was the essence. Star was an instant, colossal hit. Even the underground media, routinely cynical about everything, were impressed. “So she’s an alien thing,” one commentator said. “Aren’t all women? She can share my bed anytime.”

They went on to make a similar presentation in Paris, where Star spoke and sang in French. Then China, where she did it in Chinese. She had taken the trouble to learn all the languages she needed. She finished with Australia and Africa. They loved her everywhere. Brom was impressed again by the power of physical appearance: they knew her brain was alien, but her body was lusciously human, and that was what counted. For women as well as men.

Meanwhile the lotteries produced their winners. Star had a public date with an American man, at government expense, walking hand in hand in a public park, going to a ball where they danced, having a fancy restaurant meal, attending a phenomenal laser light show, indulging in incidental conversation, and at the end, a chaste kiss. She was perfect, an instant sweetheart, and of course the man was instantly famous. The media raged with reports on every conceivable detail.

But alone with Brom, she almost collapsed. “Hold me!” she exclaimed, shuddering. Her perfect show was a show, and required a good deal of emotional energy to maintain, something she had little prior experience with.

In due course it was time for the first tourist tour to the mother ship. Star greeted each of the seventeen participants personally. Then the group of twenty boarded the shuttle—and exited at the ship, the stages of the journey covered by stasis. If they had been nervous about stasis, they were no longer. They would spread the word about how easy it was.

They took the roller coaster ride, and were given little starfish dolls as souvenirs. Then, while the tourists shopped for other artifacts at the free gift store, Brom, Star, and Maple went to the chamber to meet Aliena.

Star stood back with Maple, while Brom went up to the wall. “Aliena!” he cried, touching the wall as she lifted a tentacle to touch on her side.

“Brom,” the speaker said, translating her whistling to words.

“I have done it,” he told her. “I have been with Star. Now I want to be with you.” And he told her about his idea for transplanting his human brain into a starfish.

“I would love to have you with me,” Aliena said. “I ache for your company. But what you propose is not realistic. It would complicate the presentation of the Envoy with a human family. Who would take your place?”

“I don’t know. But any man would be happy to be with Star.”

“And would Star be happy with any man?”

That made him pause. “I’m not sure.”

“And how would you adapt to the utterly foreign life as a starfish, where you would have no useful abilities? Kindness and consideration have no value here. You would have to learn everything from scratch—and Brom, you would be a moron among our kind. It would grieve me to do that to you.”

She was making uncomfortable sense. “I would try. I would sweep floors, or the equivalent, so long as I could be with you.”

“I appreciate that. And what of Star?” she asked. “Did you tell her?”

“She’s amenable. Ask her!”

Aliena whistled, and Star responded, the communication so rapid that they seemed to whistle together. Then Alien spoke to Brom, again, quietly. “Star loves you.”

“She said it was all right.”

“Brom, she has labored to learn love, and she has learned it at last, but it has not been easy. Human emotions are even more difficult for her than they were for me. She has learned to love you, but she will not be able to love another person. She needs someone she knows and trusts, who knows and loves her for what she is rather than for what she appears to be. Who will be strong when she is weak, and always there for her. As I needed you before. Only you can be that for her. Will you do to her what I did to you?”

What was this? “I don’t understand.”

“I won your love, then left you to your desolation despite my promise not to. Just as Lucy did.”

“You couldn’t help it! Neither could Lucy!”

“But you can help it.”

Brom digested this. “Star has been the perfect wife. But it’s her job, not love.”

“I know her as it seems you do not. It is her job, but also love. She learned to love you because she knew it was what I wanted. Because we starfish can’t properly understand humanity without understanding love. She knew that I chose her because she was the best substitute available for me in every way, including the potential to love you. She knew that I wanted her to do everything for you that I could no longer do, being with you constantly, thrilling you with sex, and loving you. I want you to be loved. Not every starfish would do that.”

“But you love me. That’s all I want.”

“Remember when I sought the grandparents? Because I wanted Maple to be with those who loved her. I sought Star similarly, for you. I gave her to you. Are you rejecting my gift?”

“Aliena, I don’t want to be unfaithful to you! I have done the rest with Star, but you are the only one I love.”

“Brom, it is a changed situation. Star is doing the job, but she can’t do it alone. She needs a man who truly understands her nature, and supports her completely, and loves her. The way I needed you and your love. The best way you can love me is by loving her. Let yourself do it!”

“I—can’t. In time, yes, but not right now. It’s too soon.”

“You can. You will give up nothing of me; I will always be here for you. I still love you. I joy in your success and happiness. But I can’t give you sex or another child or the rest. Star can. She complements me. She is doing everything I could have done, including loving Maple.”

“Maple!” he said. “I forgot her!”

“You forgot a lot,” Aliena said sternly. “Now accept Star. Not some time in the future. She needs you now.”

The realization was crushing. “I have wronged her.”

“Not yet. Now it is time for you to abolish the shell. Let it be real, as it was with me.”

Brom knew she was right. He had been selfish in excluding Star, and it was not what was feasible or fair. He realized also that he had fallen in love with a starfish mind in a human host. Now Aliena was a starfish mind in a starfish body, no longer human, almost cynically practical. She was not the same creature. Now she had a different job to do. He would only be in her way. She was trying to let him down easy.

But Star was a starfish mind in a human body. She needed him, as Aliena no longer did. She was now closer to what he loved than Aliena herself was, ironically.

“Look at her, in the reflection,” Aliena said.

He saw Star in the wall’s reflection, standing with Maple hugging her doll. Both were tense, afraid of what was to happen, but not interfering. As Aliena had been when he learned her true nature. Star had said she would not oppose his going to Aliena—because she loved him. She would not take him against his will. It was his decision. But his departure would be utter grief for her.

She was the perfect woman in every imaginable respect. How sad that he was not the perfect man. The whole world loved her. He did not?

It was like a dam bursting apart, releasing the pent water to flood the region with emotion. He did love Star, as well as Aliena. It was right that he be with her.

He stood up. He turned to face Star. She gazed at him without expression, refusing to plead or try to influence him. She was almost painfully fair-minded.

“My soul’s going to shine like a star. . .” he sang as he walked toward her.

She sounded her Note as she gladly opened her arms to him, her tears flowing.

So did Maple, to his surprise, sounding her Note.

And so did Aliena.

Author’s Note

I am a disciplined writer. I plan ahead on my projects, so that I have a general notion what I will be working on and when it will be completed. But my ideas come randomly, often when I can’t write them, such as when I am amidst an exercise run. Yes, Aliena’s exercise runs were inspired by mine; I am 78 at this writing and indulge in a sedentary occupation, so I make sure to exercise regular to maintain my health. My runs are not very fast, but that’s not the point, revving up my body, making its systems function, burning calories, maintaining muscle instead of fat, that’s the point. The fact is, exercising the body is better for the brain than doing mental exercises. So when I get a notion while running, or showering, or eating, or catching up on chores, I work it out as far as I can in my mind, then when I can, scribble it in pencil on paper. Then when I am at my desk with the computer on, I transcribe the pencil note to a more complete typed note in my Ideas file. The computer count informs me that that file is at present more than 181,000 words long. I could reduce it by a lot if I erased notions once they have become stories or novels, but I prefer to maintain their creative history. Ideas have been accumulating for some time; the oldest notion is dated January 7, 1977 in pencil, transcribed to the file on June 14, 1989. Some ideas languish for decades; some may never be used. Some get used when I review the file, looking for a story to write on request, or something to fill in a gap in a novel. But some grab me from the outset; they will not be denied. Aliena was such a case.

It started on November 24, 2012, with 600 words summary on a notion I titled “Friend.” I had finished writing the 38th Xanth novel Board Stiff the week before and was trying to take some time off before writing a novelette “Forbidden Fruit” in Tweets, each chapter limited to 140 characters or less, for my Piers Anthony promotional effort. Promotion is a pain, but as with taking out the garbage, or answering fan mail, it has to be done. Next day I added another 400 words, naming the protagonists, and the day after that, another 700, working out her auto-immune illness and loss. Okay; the notion was complete, awaiting my convenience. Then a month later came another extended siege of notes, continuing pretty much daily through January 20013. The idea would not let go of me, expanding from story to novella to short novel. I simply had to write it.

So in February 2013 I wrote it. Many of the details I worked out did not make it into the novel, and its overall nature shifted. This is the nature of writing, which can be like traveling: you can mark where you are going on a map, but when you actually go there you encounter traffic, weather, detours and distractions that change the nature of the experience. You handle it.

Aliena was intended as a singleton piece, but by the time I finished it I saw that it could be taken as the beginning of a longer narrative. This, too, happens in writing; stories and characters can develop a will and direction of their own, and the author is obliged to fulfill their imperatives. Aliena started it, but Star is completing it. The starfish technological gifts will transform the world; shouldn’t we see some of that transformation? And what of Aliena, now running the starship as it orbits the moon; is her story over? Are there other sapient alien societies out there, not necessarily as friendly as the starfish? This is a roiling stew of notions that may not suffer itself to be ignored too long. All starting with the idea of a young man being a friend to a woman who turns out to be other than he knew.

My wife gave me a book for Christmas, Brain on Fire, by Susannah Cahalan, subtitled My Month of Madness. I realized that it was the perfect reference for what happened to Becky and then to Aliena: an immune rejection of the brain. Much of it is peripherally familiar to us, because in 2004 my wife suffered a similarly mysterious malady that turned out to be an immune rejection of the myelin sheathing around the nerves leading to her arms and legs. Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy, CIDP for short. Think of it as acid eating away the insulation around the wires in your electronic equipment, shorting them out. It put her in a wheelchair, and I had to push her around, and lift her in and out of it, because her arms lacked the strength to move the wheels. We had been married 48 years, and I feared we would not make 50. When she finally got a diagnosis and treatment, the same infusions the author of the book got, it slowly turned her around, and today she is back on her feet and functioning, albeit without the pep of her pre-illness life. There are a number of auto-immune diseases; some can be treated, others can’t. We were lucky. But Aliena, with a genuinely alien brain, wasn’t.

So there is some of my life and experience in this novel, unsurprisingly. I pretty much fell in love with Aliena, and grieved with Brom when she had to leave. Now I will have to come to emotional terms with Star. This, too, is typical of writing.

Readers who want to know more of me are welcome to visit my Web Site www.hipiers.com/, where I have background information like a list of all my 160+ published books, a monthly ornery liberal blog-type column, and maintain an ongoing candid survey of electronic publishers and related services to help writers locate the best prospects. There is also the blog site at http://piersanthonyblog.blogspot.com/, and a Twitter site for my stories told in Tweets, at https://twitter.com/PiersAnthony. And my email, PiersAnthony@hipiers.com. I am approachable, if that is your interest. Even if you didn’t enjoy the novel. (And why the bleep didn’t you? Tell me.)

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 by Piers Anthony

ISBN: 978-1-4976-5717-5

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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Table of Contents

- Title Page
- Contents
- Part 1: Learning Love
- Part 2: Trillion Dollar Project
- Part 3: Redemption
- Author's Note
- Copyright Page