Alien Caller (13 page)

The real
question was how much further any of them had gone? The bank, the
pensions office, military records, or even top-secret databases?
How much had national security been compromised? How much more did
they know about him? He was paid by the CIA, that was true, and had
even been part of them for many years after he was seconded from
the army. But that had been a long time ago. After that he had been
seconded again by the Department of Defence. And not just the
Department but Project Alpha within it. Either way he had to answer
her.

“They’re both
true. The army and the CIA have a long standing association, and I
was seconded to them for many years. But if people knew I’m ex CIA
they’d never talk to me again. They’d never trust me. So I hide it.
But I still stand by what I told Alice and your leaders. I’m out of
that world and I don’t want to get back in. Revealing your people’s
presence on Earth would put me squarely back in it, so deep I’d
never get out. Like Alice said, play nice and I won’t tell.” Yet
quietly he was starting to become more anxious about the whole
thing. Had she noticed?

“Until can
trust, I follow. Now swim.” With that she indicated that he should
carry on his way, and he knew there would be no more discussion.
For at least a while he would have a tail. He gave up and carried
on with his swim, letting the exercise organize his thoughts and
calm his mind. By the time he reached the buoy he was at least
calm, though he still had no idea what to do. The kilometre back
didn’t give him any more clues, though at least he felt refreshed
as usual.

Crawling out of
the lake he heard her splashing and knew she was right behind him.
She had been almost touching his feet the whole way. But then she
could easily have blown past him. It was embarrassing, but she
wasn’t even breathing hard. On the other hand she had a tail which
she used to beat the water as she kicked, while her freestyle arm
movements were like knives cutting cleanly into the lake. She was
also far more buoyant than him. She didn’t so much swim in the lake
as she did paddle from above. He turned around to find her mere
feet behind him, wearing her normal clothes. Her fur was sleeked
down like an otter’s, and there was something distinctly feral in
her features. But with her hair slicked back for the first time he
could see the shape of her face clearly.

Alice had been
right, she looked distinctly Asian. And, ahh, rather well endowed.
Voluptuous was a word that must have been created just to describe
her. He had known she was a female the first time he’d seen her,
but seeing her like that was a revelation. Maybe she stood five
foot six high, about average for a woman, but there was nothing
average about her other measurements. She was large where she
wanted to be, with a narrow waist, nice hips and plenty of firm,
well toned muscle. He tried not to stare and wasn’t completely
successful. If the truth be known he wasn’t very successful at
all.

“Now what?”

“Now exercise.
Do everything as normal. I’m not here. Pretend.” Which was going to
be difficult. Acting on her words he headed for the house, and was
stopped immediately.

“Uh uh. Remove
rubber suit, or get water in house. Do everything normal.” And
before he could even think of what to say he felt hands at the
clasp at the back of his neck, and the zip was being pulled down.
He tried not to flinch, knowing all those claws were inches from
his back. Instead he peeled himself out of the suit as he normally
did, pegged it on the outside line and hosed it down. And all the
time he was really trying to pretend he wasn’t vulnerable, stripped
down to just his togs in front of her.

She stared at
him intently, curious, and not in an academic way. If he had stared
at her body, she in turn felt free to stare at his. Free to comment
too.

“Strong body.
Bigger than others. Bigger shoulders, long muscles, but loose
around middle, and scar on leg. It hurts you yes?” He nodded that
indeed his bullet wound did hurt sometimes, the result of the
doctors not being able to remove it all, and he tried not to recoil
at the rest of her analysis. Flabby? He was not flabby! Sometimes
he guessed, it was best to say nothing at all. He headed for the
house trying not to let anything sag any more than it had to.

“Slow walk,
slight limp, cannot fix?” He shook his head, knowing immediately
what the next words out of her mouth would be.

“We can.”
Exactly as in every text book. Whether she meant it that way or not
it was a bribe. A way of eliciting his support, of compromising
him. He shook his head again and marched off towards the gym, not
wanting to even try to explain. It would only end in
disagreement.

Sadly once in
the gym he found things were going to run stormily anyway.

It began with
the stretches, when he found for every stretch he could do, Cyrea
could do two and twice as far. It didn’t help that she kept
critiquing him, commenting on how inflexible he was. She even
offered to help him train, and had her nose put out of joint when
he told her he didn’t really want to be able to put his feet behind
his head. He apologized immediately of course, but the damage was
done. She took his words as a criticism; as a statement that her
skills were worthless.

The weights of
course were the complete opposite. He’d been a gym freak for years,
ever since he’d realized how much it helped him with the combat. He
could bench press easily five times as much as her, and the same
was true of every other weight press or curl. It didn’t help when
he innocently suggested that she start off on the lighter weights,
and then when her pride refused to allow her to, he had had to jump
in and rescue her from some of them. Of course she didn’t like that
one tiny little bit. From the glare of her eyes he thought for a
while she was going to chop him up into little pieces. But she held
back and said nothing, at least that he could hear.

The aerobic
machines were a nice balance, with them being reasonably well
matched. He beat her on the rower and grinder, but she held him out
on the air bike and decimated him on the stepper. Her wound had
definitely recovered. It was a relatively peaceful half hour as
they simply sweated their way through the aerobic part of the
workout, each enjoying the closeness of the competition. They were,
he realized, very similar in some respects. Alice, curse her
busybody nature, was right.

But then came
the strength moves. Chin ups, push ups and the like. He always
ended on them. With all his blood flowing and his body warm, they
were relatively comfortable. But not this day. They were another
form of weights, and he easily won. Which meant that Cyrea got
grumpy again.

It was the hand
springs that were the final straw. He had just done his first set
of ten, raising and lowering his entire body weight on a pair of
parallel bars, when she insisted on giving it a try. By that time
he had learned enough to know not to say anything. Instead he just
helped her to the bars fixed high on the wall and waited.

It wasn’t a
long wait. About five inches into her first dip, her arms folded as
he’d expected and she suddenly found herself hanging from her arm
pits. There was no way she could ever get out of the position and
he foolishly told her so. He wasn’t sure what her reply was as it
wasn’t in English, but he knew it wasn’t polite. From there it was
all downhill.

Manners
overcame common sense and he’d immediately grabbed her waist,
trying to help her up from supporting her entire body on just her
arm pits. He knew even as she stiffened at his touch that he’d made
a mistake. It wasn’t just the unexpected familiarity, it was the
sense of humiliation.

After making
the further mistake of helping her down, a bad one, he should have
let her fall, she ripped loose on him in her native tongue, to
which he responded that most human women and even men couldn’t have
performed the routine either. Not without a lot of practice. It was
true, and he’d even thought it tactful, but Cyrea wasn’t about to
accept any such thing.

She started by
calling him a bully and a beast, with no brain and no decency. She
should have shot him the first day when she’d had the chance.
Instead she’d been too trusting and let him overpower her with his
brute strength, and then pin her like a beast in the field. There
was something in that last that really seemed to have riled her.
Apparently she was still smarting about it.

He should have
held back, have bitten his tongue, but he couldn’t. Something in
him just ran wild, and he let it all loose. He called her an
ungrateful savage, who’d invaded his home, and then after he’d gone
to the trouble of tending to her wounds, she had tried to kill him.
From there it was an ever steeper downhill slide as they traded
insults like stamps.

They scowled
and spat at one another like alley cats for some time, until David
realizing it wasn’t going to get any better and decided to leave.
He’d done enough weights for one day. Unfortunately Cyrea wasn’t
finished.

In the lounge,
heading for the kitchen he felt her hand on his shoulder, and heard
her cry out in her alien tongue. He acted on instinct, long since
primed by the tension he’d been through, and grabbed her hand and
flipped her. At least he later reflected, she landed on the rug. If
she’d come down on the hard floor backside first he wasn’t sure she
would ever have forgiven him.

As it was her
response was immediate and violent. She leapt at him claws
extended, and considering her furious speed it was a miracle he got
out of her way at all. Instead her claws narrowly missed him,
turning another t-shirt into ribbons.

“I’m sorry.” He
shouted it at her in the hope she would accept his apology, but she
wasn’t listening. She was furious. Instead she tried another
whirling lunge claws extended and he simply reacted. Dodging the
flying claws he caught her from behind and quickly looped his arms
under her shoulders, then clasped his hands together behind her
neck. In one second she was caught in a classic wrestling hold,
arms held straight out from her body, and she knew it.

There were only
two ways out of the hold, either up or down, and they both knew it.
She tried down first, suddenly taking her feet off the ground and
swinging her body as far forward and downward as she could. But he
was braced for that, and held her firmly, even as he was trying to
calm her down.

But when that
didn’t work she went for the skywards approach leaping as high as
she could and backwards into him, using him as a spring board. He’d
been waiting for it.

Immediately he
fell backwards with her, taking the spring out of her leap, and
then did a take down. Falling backwards onto the carpet he dragged
her down on top of him. It was a bruising impact, but nothing he
couldn’t take on his shoulder blades. Her backside impacted on his
pelvis, and her legs unavoidably straightened as he’d counted on.
No sooner had her legs started falling back to the ground then he
looped his own around them, crossing his ankles over her knees,
until they too were locked.

From that point
on he knew he had her, and she did too. She was spread-eagled like
a scarecrow, pinned from underneath, totally unable to move her
arms or legs. She was completely trapped. He took the opportunity
to grab a few deep breaths while she struggled hopelessly against
him.

“I’m sorry.” He
just kept calling it quietly into her ear just in front of his
mouth, until she finally stopped struggling and started listening.
It took some time, as he expected. Whatever else Cyrea was, she was
angry. But eventually she ran out of steam and her struggles
diminished. He didn’t truly know whether that was actual tiredness
or just a ploy to get him to ease up. He didn’t ease up. But she
did start to listen.

“Why you sorry?
You attack me, you beat me again. You not sorry, just bad
liar.”

“No, I am
sorry. I didn’t mean to attack you. But I was mad. You were driving
me crazy with your non-stop bickering. Then when you came up behind
me, I didn’t hear you. When you caught me off guard, put your hand
on my shoulder and screamed, I just reacted. I am very sorry.
Truly.”

“That’s not
reaction. You don’t just throw people around room and call
instinct. Is an intention. You had to plan it.” She wasn’t buying a
word of it, and he knew it.

“You’re wrong.
For most people it’s not a reaction. For me it is just that, pure
reflex. I’ve spent twenty years honing my skills. Practising every
day. And I’ve used them in every possible way, and against every
type of opponent. I’ve killed and maimed people in unarmed combat,
and they were generally armed. The only way I could do that is to
act and react without thinking. Twenty years of combat experience
doesn’t let me think about things. I just react.”

“Huh! I spend
nearly as long learning to fight, and while I kill no one that way,
I still sent my share to doctor. I don’t do that by instinct, and
neither you do.” He knew it was going to be a hard sell, but at
least she was talking.

“Cyrea, you’re
not army. You’re not special forces. I was trained specifically to
kill people without thought. Thinking slows you down. I kill
without question, and without hesitation. I can kill anyone in a
heartbeat. Before I even knew who they were. Friend or foe, they
would be dead. That very training has saved my life, many times
over. And I am a survivor.” She listened to him, anger and distrust
written in her rigid posture, and he knew it was going to be a long
time before she calmed down.