Page 42 of Sky Song
“Lyle! They’ve been looking for her for days, but it’s like she never existed. I’m worried something bad happened.”
Lyle came closer. “Why are you worried? She was rude and unpleasant to you and to everyone around her, am I right?”
When he was so near, it took all Cricket’s willpower not to rest her cheek against his chest. She’d known this man - this alien - for less than a month, and could count on one hand the number of face-to-face interactions they’d had. He had a tendency to be evasive if not outright dishonest. Rest her head on his chest? She should have her head checked at one of those little well-being clinics with cheerful window signs that the government constantly promoted as a solution for all sorts of general human unhappiness.
“I truly wish Kim came back safe. But some others - many others, actually - think that she met a bad end because of all her crazy theories.”
“What theories?”
“Kim had a wild imagination. Existential threat from aliens, an impending invasion, human replacement theories. She really hated aliens. And, as I recently found out, there was a man she dated who’d also worked at the lab, and who’d died horrendously from a chemical poisoning. According to Salty, Kim claimed he was killed.”
“By who?”
“Who knows?Enemies.” She made quotation marks with her fingers.
Lyle’s eyes were clear now, black and all-seeing as usual. “The same enemies that abducted the feisty Kim?”
“Yeah, the same ones.” She chuckled but quickly sobered up. “Except I don’t think there are enemies in Kim’s sense of the word.”
“What doyouthink?” His deceptively casual question was very probing.
Cricket frowned. “I think,” she started and had to stop. Something about Kim’s situation, already out of the ordinary, was making her particularly uneasy today, and she blamed it on Lyle who was suddenly into this topic. “I think her interest in all things survivalist got her tangled up with some unsavory types and…” She raised her eyes, looking at her reflection in Lyle’s. “I don’t want to think she got herself killed. Do you think she got herself killed?”
His energy flared. “Take me to work with you.”
Cricket jerked back. “What? No. Why? That’s out of the question.”
“I’m a medical professional. I can be useful in looking for clues at the hospital.”
“No. No, no. If you want to ask them for help in contacting your transport, I can take you. But not for snooping around. It’ll make us as bad as Kim, looking for boogeymen where there are none. Besides, I… can’t take the risk.”
Lyle cocked his head. “Just how much risk, exactly, do you put yourself at on my account?”
She turned and led him to the kitchen where she started her coffee. “I won’t get jailed for keeping company with an alien, of course.” She was ninety percent sure. “But I’d rather not lose my job over it.” That would be a disaster.
Lyle seemed to pick up on the importance. “I won’t get caught, I promise. But I want to see your lab again. People die, get gone from there. Odd, huh?”
Now he was making her jittery. “It isn’t the lab. It’s those two, Igor and Kim. They were out of the norm. The rest of us are fine.” They were! And there was no way in green hell she was smuggling him to the hospital. This alien better think again.
“What if there was a chance to help Kim, and you’ve refused to take it out of fear of losing your job?” He was acting all demure and righteous.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you coercing me?”
“I’m not sure what that means,” he purred. “Actually, forget I asked.”
The rider was gliding smoothly toward the hospital down a well-maintained road. Cricket’s jumbled stream of second thoughts, on the contrary, went all bumpy and zig-zagging inside her head.
“I’ve been coming in earlier than usual to do extra work,” she explained to Lyle who was sitting in the passenger seat looking out at the cityscape. He was wearing her wide-brimmed sun hat, decidedly feminine in design, to cover up the upper part of his face that was the most alien in appearance. His weird silvery getup was conspicuous as shit and could draw attention, but Cricket possessed no article of clothing to fit his frame. So, aside from wrapping him in a bedsheet, she hadn’t been able to offer solutions, and the sheet would have been even more attention-grabbing than his intergalactic suit.
“The previous shift usually leaves at about now, and if we’re lucky, we can snag the elevator for ourselves.”
He looked unconcerned and didn’t respond.
“I wish you could tell me what you’re looking for so I can look for it myself.”
“I know,” he replied patiently. They’d had this conversation ten times already. “I wish I could tell you, but I don’t know what we’re looking for until we get there.”
Cricket chewed her lip again. It was becoming raw. “What if you don’t find anything?”
