It had been a month since Gareth’s transformation. A month of looking at a new face in the mirror in the morning.
Talyarkinash had printed a picture for him, a photo taken back when he was still human. He had grown into his Vanir face, but it was still damnably odd, comparing the man he had become with the man he had been as recently as six weeks ago.
The ears were probably the hardest part to adjust to. On a human, they were rounder, both on the top and the bottom. His new Vanir ears were almost pointed at the top, like cartoon depictions of elves. Sleeker. Taller too, by maybe a whole inch.
Gareth couldn’t tell if it was new ears that had made his hearing any sharper, or all the other modifications that had come with what Talyarkinash had done to him, with the help of the two Yuudixtl scientists: Morty and Xiomber.
Similarly, his eyes were ever-so-much bigger as a fraction of his face. And wider, coming out to sharper corners that almost made him feel half-Japanese, if there was such a thing. Cheekbones had grown more angular, sharper planes than his more-rounded face and head had been.
At least the soft, blond beard covered part of his face, and blurred some of the changes. It had finally grown in enough that it stopped itching, but it still threw him off when he saw that person in the mirror.
It was Gareth St. John Dankworth. Field Agent of Earth Force Sky Patrol, Missile Division, 6th Cavalry Troop. Except it wasn’t, anymore.
Probably never would be again, unless something magical happened.
More magical.
More bizarre than all the things that he had seen since Morty and Xiomber pulled him through an illegal wormhole from Earth Force’s base in the Earth/Moon L2, The Arsenal. Dragged him into the wider galaxy. To the Accord of Souls, which humans could also never become members of.
But he was still a cop. A protector of the innocent. He would do that here, as long and as well as they allowed him.
Gareth wiped both hands down his face, watching the stranger in the mirror do the same. He ran his hands back though blond hair that should have been cut six weeks ago. At this point, he was likely to turn into a bohemian, a surfer pretty soon, with long, curly locks already touching his collar and perhaps down to his shoulder blades in another year.
A Field Agent would never be that far outside of regulations, unless he was a Secret Agent operating under cover. But Gareth wasn’t a Field Agent these days. Might never be again.
Would most likely never see Earth again. Or his friends. His family.
Or Pippa.
Gareth reached into a pocket of his pants and pulled out the tiny, leather pouch his still kept with him at all times. From inside, he pulled out the gold ring with the single, white diamond in the middle, surrounded by ruby and gold stones representing Sky Patrol.
Today, they represented Loss. The life he could never go back to. The sacrifices he had been called upon to make, in the name of duty.
He had considered asking Talyarkinash to find a way to clone his body and turn it back into the human he had been, so that they could return it to Earth and he could be declared formally dead. Pippa might wait the rest of her life for a man who could never return. And even if he did, she was still human, so they could never have children. Never be a family.
He tucked the ring and the pouch back into his pocket and sighed heavily.
Never be.
Gareth emerged from the small bathroom into his suite. It was as identical to his cabin, back at the Arsenal, as he had been able to make it, both in layout and content. A single bed, or whatever the equivalent was when he was seven-feet-four-inches tall and had a seventy-inch chest. The chester had been scaled up as well, but still had four drawers, white paint, and a flat top. A reading chair by the bathroom, warm and comfortable. A table and two chairs by the door.
Home. Or a reasonable imitation thereof.
He grabbed his tunic from where he had dropped it on the bed and pulled it on. Constabulary Blue, like his pants. Almost the color of his blue-gray eyes. So tight as to be a second skin, but somehow woven with a layer of triangular scales covering much of the exterior and providing protection against blunt and edged weapons.
The uniform of a Constable. Or whatever Gareth was. He hadn’t been to their police school, but had come back to his cabin after dinner every night and studied and read everything he was allowed access to. Back home, he had been a Field Agent of Sky Patrol, so he knew how to be a cop.
Here, he was introduced to anyone who visited this facility as an Explorer, roughly equivalent to a Patrolman, or a Deputy Agent back home. It was a good enough cover story. The fewer people that knew the truth, the safer everyone would be.
He had no idea what the actual truth was either.
Gareth turned and found the digital clock sitting on the chester, counting slowly. Getting used to a twenty-eight-hour day had been possibly the smallest thing, as well as the weirdest, in a month of complete nonsense.
Fourteen meant local zenith. Back home, time for lunch. Here, breakfast was at six, lunch was at eleven, dinner was at sixteen, and supper was at twenty-one. Four meals, instead of the three he grew up with, but Gareth just pretended that third meal was the equivalent of English High Tea and that all sort of made it all work in his head.
Dr. Royston Loughty, PhD, FRS, CBE, CStJ, and Pippa’s father, would have called it a serious case of culture shock, and he would have been correct. But there wasn’t anything Gareth could do but roll forward and figure it all out as he went.
That was all any of them could do, but their lives hadn’t been nearly as upended as his.
Gareth held his elbows out and flexed, making sure his tunic stretched right. According to Talyarkinash, it would move with him when he changed forms, becoming somehow absorbed into his flesh when he did, and adding an extra layer of dermal armor when…
How did you explain it to a complete stranger that had never seen it happen? That Gareth St. John Dankworth, as a human, did not have any of the limitations to his genetics that the Chaa, the Elders who had uplifted all of the species of the Accord of Souls and then bound them into a psionic unity, had put on all the others.
What vocabulary did you use to explain that you could turn into a thing he called a Star Dragon?
Gareth shrugged and headed towards the door of his cabin. He didn’t want to be late to his meeting. Constable Baker and Senior Constable Grodray would be there.
Gareth hoped that meant that there would be action soon.