It was so prosaic that Lucie had to sit a moment more while she adjusted to the simplicity of it. The ordinariness.
She got to her feet and pulled her pack from under the seat and shouldered it. Then, reluctantly, she joined the end of the thick line of people moving off the ship.
As she climbed down the ramp, she looked around. Never mind trying to look like she did this every day. This wasCharlton City! If there was a home world for Varkans, Charlton City was it.
Charlton was a sprawling city hanging in space over a planet no one could ever remember the name of. It was the city where Varkans had first come together in large numbers, and from where they had saved human civilization from the Periglus—the freaky, noncommunicative giant aliens who had taken over both the Soward system and the Sunita system, forcing millions of humans and Varkans to give up their homes and evacuate.
So far, thanks to the Varkans, the Periglus had not harmed a single person. Instead, the aliens and the rest of the known worlds stood apart and incommunicado.
Lucie didn’t realize she was holding her breath as she looked around the landing bay, while also trying to stay within the safety lane painted on the floor, and at the same time, trying to glimpse the city itself through the large windows running down one side of the bay. The safety lane directed everyone to a small door in the far corner of the landing bay.
“Blake! Blake!” A man bellowed the name behind her. He wasn’t the only one shouting, although the other shouts were from farther away and Lucie couldn’t make out the words.
She tried to peer ahead over shoulders and around bodies to see what lay beyond the door of the landing bay. Once she had her hostel room sorted out for the night, she intended to visit Celestial, the village dome that was supposed to be breathtakingly beautiful. It was also the village where Yennifer Charlton and Connell had lived together for years after they had helped save the city and humans from the Periglus.
Of course, they didn’t live there anymore. That had been nearly two hundred years ago. But it would have been so much fun to actually run into them. To meet them. Maybe even spend a little time in their company and hear their stories about the dawn of the Varkan Age—
A hand gripped her arm and yanked Lucie around to face the other way, almost taking her off her feet. She dropped her pack, as her fingers went instantly numb under the power of the grip on her arm.
“What the hell, Blake? What are you doing here?” a very large man shouted at her.
Lucie stared at him. “Excuse me?”
He took hold of her other arm and gave her a little shake. “You’re alive!” His face worked with a range of emotions thatLucie didn’t have time to analyze. His eyes glittered…were those tears? “Blake…!” His voice was hoarse. His hands squeezed.
Lucie scrambled to understand what was happening. She felt flat-footed and stupid. The man holding her arms was taller than her. Maybe two meters high. But not spindly, not at all. His shoulders were wide and thick. He had muscle and strength, as his grip on her arms told her. His thick brown hair was not cut super-short, but waved back from a high forehead. Thick dark brown brows, and a sharp jaw. His chin had a dimple, and a prickling of whiskers.
Lucie couldn’t remember being this close to anyone since waking as a Varkan. The doctors, of course. Nursing staff. Physiotherapists who had to handle her while they taught her how to walk, how to feed herself and more.
But no one since, except for a child’s kicking foot. And now this man, who felt as though he could easily move her around to any area in the landing bay whether she wanted to go there or not.
This man, who was staring at her, his gaze moving over her face, while…yes, stars, it wasgriefplaying in his eyes, making his features contort.
The moment only stretched for a few heartbeats, but seemed to last forever.
“Oh….!” Lucie whispered, as she put it all together so it made sense.
“Captain Santiago!” someone shouted.
The man’s gaze flickered sideways, then came right back to Lucie. His fingers worked against her flesh. “Blake…” he said again. His throat worked. “You’re actually here… I thought you were dead.Everyonethought you were dead.”
Lucie nodded. Pity mixed with her embarrassment. She was going to have to destroy this man’s hope, the happiness thatwas building in his eyes. There was nothing for it, but to do it as quickly as possible.
“I’m sorry, Captain,” Lucie said, as gently as she could. “I’m not Blake.” She looked into his eyes, because it was important that he understand this. “I am a Varkan.”
She saw his dawning pleasure die. Puzzlement replaced it. “Varkan,” he repeated, his tone wooden.
“I used the interplanetary DNA pool,” Lucie added. “Your friend, Blake…she must have donated her DNA to the pool.” She could feel her cheeks heating, because only the poorest and most desperate of sentient computers, those who couldn’t find a more lucrative way of raising money for their transfer to a Varkan body, used the interplanetary pool. She would be paying for the transfer for ninety-nine years, at an interest rate that made her look desperate.
But shehadbeen desperate to gain the freedom that came with being a Varkan. No human had offered her their own DNA, which was the other common way of gaining a Varkan body. So she had bought DNA from the common pool.
The man, Captain Santiago, let go of her hands. He straightened, frowning. “But…you lookexactlylike her…” Raw pain strained his voice.
Lucie’s pity increased. “It happens sometimes,” she said. She had done a moon’s weight of research before becoming a Varkan, and she had transferred many of those memories into this body. But the truth made her feel even smaller and more embarrassed to expose her poor beginnings. “There’s no control over gene expression when you elect to use pool DNA, you see.” That was an option the soon-to-be-Varkans with luxury budgets could afford. “And they didn’t tell me whose DNA I was given.” She got to choose gender, and that was all.
Santiago cleared his throat. Understanding was building in his eyes, along with awkwardness.
“This is…it’s unusual,” Lucie said. But it wasn’trare. As long as humans donated their DNA to let Varkans build clone bodies to house their minds, it would always be possible to meet people who’d known the original human. But in the two hundred years since Bedivere X, the very first Varkan, had made his famous first jump through Interspace, protocols to handle the situation had arisen. Customs had formed to minimize upset for either party.
