Tom Falkner said, “Be it ever so humble, et cetera. Will you come in for a while?”
“Of course,” Kathryn told him.
He opened the door and switched on the light. They had been driving around Albuquerque all afternoon. She had left her little girl with a neighbor, she said, and kept repeating that she really ought to get home and prepare dinner. But each time it had actually come down to going home, Kathryn had agreed to stay with him a little longer. And now they were at his house.
He looked at her closely for what seemed the first time. In the car, with her beside him, he had not been able to see her properly. Now he stared without hesitation. She was tall and slim, past her first youth but much younger than he was, and of the kind of physique that he suspected would not begin to show any signs of aging for fifteen or twenty more years. She could not be called pretty, with those blade-like cheekbones and those thin lips and the too-wide mouth, but no one would find her unattractive. Right now her eyes were bordered by dark crescents. She had not slept much lately, it would seem. Neither had he. Neither had he.
He said, “Of course, we can’t tell a soul about what we experienced.”
“No. We don’t want to be branded as lunatics, do we?”
He chuckled. “We could always found a new cult. Frederic Storm could use some competition. We’ll set up a temple, and preach the gospel of the watchers, and—”
“Tom, let’s not.”
“I’m not serious. Would you care for a drink?”
“I think so.”
“I’ve got a very limited assortment. Ersatz Scotch, and some bourbon, and—”
“Anything,” Kathryn said. “I don’t really care for the taste of liquor. Just give me a spray can.”
“That’s hardly an elegant way to drink.”
“I’m hardly an elegant person,” Kathryn said.
He smiled and offered a tray of spray cans. She took one, and, to be polite about it, so did he, and they put the nozzles to their arms in silence. Afterward he said, “Your husband was an Air Force man, you said?”
“That’s right. Theodore Mason. He was killed in Syria.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know him. He was stationed at Kirtland?”
“Until they shipped him overseas.”
“It’s a big base,” he said. “I wish I had known him, though.”
“Why do you say that?”
He felt his cheeks glowing. “I don’t know. Just because — well, because he was your husband, and I — it would have been nice — if — oh, hell. I sound like a tongue-tied kid, don’t I? A big overgrown adolescent of forty-three. Another drink?”
“Not just yet.”
He didn’t take one either. She produced a photograph of her daughter. Falkner’s hand shook a little as he took the glossy tridim print from her, and saw a nude little girl of about two or three grinning at him from a clump of greenery.
“Shameless hussy, isn’t she?” he asked.
“I’m trying to teach her some modesty. Maybe in another fifteen years I’ll succeed.”
“How old is she now?”
“Three.”
“Better teach her faster,” Falkner said.
The conversation faltered. He was trying not to talk about the star people, and so was she, even though that was what had brought them together. But the topic could not be kept submerged for long.
He said finally, “I suppose they’ve reached their relief base by now. They’re undergoing treatment by their own doctors. Do you think they’re talking about us?”
“I’m sure of it,” Kathryn said. “They must be.”
“Describing to each other the good-hearted shaggy apes who took care of them.”
“That isn’t fair. They think more of us than that.”
“Do they? Aren’t we just apes to them? Dangerous apes, with big bombs?”
“Maybe as a race, we are. But not as individuals. I don’t know about you and Glair, but I have the feeling that Vorneen respected me as a person. That he made allowances for the fact that I was human, but that he never looked down at me, never was inwardly sneering.”
“It was that way with me and Glair, too. I take it back.”
“They’re pretty special people,” Kathryn said. “I believe that whatever you and I felt for them was reciprocated. They’re warm — kind—”
“I wonder what the Kranazoi are like,” Falkner said suddenly.
“Who?”
“The other race. The galactic rivals. Didn’t Vorneen tell you about the political situation, the cold war out there?”
“Oh. Yes.”
“It’s funny, Kathryn. We don’t even know if the Dirnans are the good guys or the bad guys. The two we met were pretty good, but suppose the Kranazoi are the ones we should root for? We got such a thin slice of a view into their affairs. That’s why I called us apes. There’s a struggle going on out there, and we have an inkling of it, but we don’t really know what’s what. And the sky is full of Dirnan ships and Kranazoi ships, watching us, hatching schemes, outmaneuvering each other.” Falkner shrugged. “It makes me dizzy to think of it”
“Vorneen said that one day the covenants would end and they’d be able to make open contact with us.”
“Glair said that too.”
“How soon do you think that will be?”
“Fifty years, maybe. A hundred. A thousand. I don’t know.”
“I hope it’s soon.”
“Why, Kathryn?”
“So that Vorneen will come back — Vorneen and Glair, both of them, and we’ll see them again.”
He shook his head somberly. “That’s a dangerous delusion to carry around, Kathryn. They aren’t coming back. Even if the covenants are canceled next week, you’ll never see Vorneen again. And I’ll never see Glair. You can be certain of that. The break is final. It has to be. There’s no future in a love affair between people from different worlds. They’ll see to it that we never meet them again. There’s a wound, when love is cut off that way, and they mean to let that wound heal and stay healed.”
“Do you really think it would have been impossible?”
“Look,” he said, “it’s hard enough for two human beings to keep love alive. It’s always difficult to share your life with another person. And if the other person isn’t even a person—”
“I don’t think it’s so difficult to fall in love,” said Kathryn.
“Or to stay in love. And if the other person is a Dirnan, well, it may be harder, but—” She paused. “All right. I’m being foolish. They’re gone. We’ve each had a strange and wonderful experience, and now we’ve got to pick up the pieces of our lives.”
Falkner sensed that she had thrown him a cue. But he could not respond to it, not now, not so soon. In time, he realized, he and Kathryn might help each other pick those pieces up. For the moment he had to move warily, learning who she was and perhaps even learning who he was. before he dared to open himself once again. Despite what she said, he still believed that it was a difficult thing, this business of joining your life to another person’s.
“It’s dark out now,” she said. “I’d better start for home. Jill’s going to get cranky if I don’t show up soon.”
“I’ll take you back.”
Outside the house, they could see the stars, even though the young moon and the city lights of Albuquerque competed with them in the sky. Involuntarily, they both looked an. He knew what she must be thinking. Their eyes met, and he grinned, and she grinned, and they laughed.
“We aren’t doing a very good job of forgetting them, are we?” Kathryn said.
“Not yet. And we won’t really forget them, not ever. For a few weeks of our lives the stars came down to us. That can’t be forgotten. But it has to be survived. The stars are gone now, and we’re still here.”
They got into his car.
“I enjoyed this today,” she said.
“So did I. We’ll do it again.”
“Soon.”
“Very soon,” Falkner told her. There was more he wanted to say, much more. It would be said, in time. He was not much for blurting things to strangers. He suspected, though, that he and Kathryn shortly would cease to be strangers to one another. Too much bound them. A shared knowledge of smooth, cool skins and galactic politics, of broken legs and sudden farewells. That much drew them together, setting them apart from the rest of this planet’s four billion people. He felt a sensation within him as of a coiled spring beginning to unwind after too many years of compression. He was smiling as he kicked the starter and got the car moving. She smiled too. Above the windshield curved the vault of the heavens. Glair and Vorneen were out there somewhere. He wished them a safe voyage home.