Sassinak (7 page)

"You're making it fine," he said, not waiting for her to speak. Already, she recognized in herself and in his reactions the relationship they would have later.

"I hope so." She loosened the collar of the uniform and stretched out on the low divan. He took her cap and set it carefully on a shelf.

"Making friends, too?"

"Some." His nod encouraged her, and she told him about the heavyworlders. Abe frowned.

"You want to watch them; they can be devious."

"I know. But—"

"But they're also right. Most normals
do
think of them as big stupid musclemen, and treat them that way. Poor sods. The smart ones resent it, and if they're smart enough they can be real trouble. What you want to do, Sass, is convince 'em you're fair, without giving them a weak point to push on. Their training makes 'em value strength and endurance over anything else."

"But they're not all alike." Sass told him all she'd learned, about the heavyworld cultures. "—and I wonder myself if the heavyworlders are being used by the same bunch who are behind the pirates and slavers," she finished.

Abe had been setting out a cold meal as she talked. Now he stopped, and leaned on the table. "I dunno. Could be. But at least some of the heavyworlders are probably pirates themselves. You be careful." Sass didn't argue; she didn't like the thought that Abe might have his limitations; she needed him to be all-knowing, for a long time yet. On the other hand, she sensed, in her heavyworlder friends, the capacity for honesty and loyalty, and in herself an unusual ability to make friends with people of all backgrounds.

By her third year, she was recognized as a promising young cadet officer, and resistance to her background had nearly disappeared. Colonial stock, yes: but colonial stock included plenty of "good" families, younger sons and daughters who had sought adventure rather than a safe seat in the family corporation. That she never claimed such a connection spoke well of her; others claimed it in her name.

Her own researches into her family were discreet. The psychs had passed her as safely adjusted to the loss of her family. She wasn't sure how they'd react if they found her rummaging through the colonial databases, so she masked her queries carefully. She didn't want anyone to question her fitness for Fleet. When she'd entered everything she could remember, she waited for the computer to spit out the rest.

The first surprise was a living relative (or "supposed alive" the computer had it) some three generations back. Sass blinked at the screen. A great-great-great grandmother (or aunt: she wasn't quite sure of the code symbols) now on Exploration Service. Lunzie . . . so
that
was the famous ancestor her little sister had been named for. Her mother had said no more than that—may not have known more than that, Sass realized. Even as a cadet, she herself had access to more information than most colonists, already. She thought of contacting her distant family members someday . . . someday when she was a successful Fleet officer. Not any time soon, though. Fleet would be her family, and Abe was her father now.

He took his responsibility seriously in more ways than one, she discovered at their next meeting.

"Take the five-year implant, and don't worry about it. You're not going to be a mother anytime soon. Should have had it before now, probably."

"I don't want to be a sopping romantic, either," said Sass, scowling.

Abe grinned at her. "Sass, I'm not telling you to fall in love. I'm telling you that you're grown, and your body knows it. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do, but you're about to want to."

"I am
not
." Sass glared at him.

"You haven't noticed anything?"

Sass opened her mouth to deny it, only to realize that she couldn't. He'd seen her with the others, and he, more than anyone, knew every nuance of her body.

"Take the implant. Do what you want afterwards."

"You're not telling me to be careful," she said, almost petulantly.

"Stars, girl, I only adopted you. I'm not really your father, and even if I were I wouldn't tell you to be careful. Not you, of all people."

"My . . . my real father . . ."

"Was a dirtball colonist. I'm Fleet. You're Fleet now. You don't believe all that stuff you were taught. You're the last woman to stay virginal all your life, Sass, and that's the truth of it. Learn what you need, and see that you get it."

Sass shivered. "Sounds very mechanical, that way."

"Not really." Abe smiled at her, wistful and tender. "Sass, it's a great pleasure, and a great relaxation. For some people, long-term pairing is part of it. Your parents may have been that way. But you aren't that sort. I've watched you now for what? Eight years, is it, or ten? You're an adventurer by nature; you always were, and what happened to you brought it out even stronger. You're passionate, but you don't want to be bothered with long-term relationships."

The five-year implant she requested at Medical raised no eyebrows. When the doctor discovered it was her first, she insisted that Sass read a folder about it " . . . So you'll know nothing's wrong when that patch on your arm changes color. Just come in for another one. It'll be in your records, of course, but sometimes your records aren't with you."

Once she had the implant, she couldn't seem to stop thinking about it. Who would it be? Who would be
first
, she scolded herself, accepting with no more argument Abe's estimate of her character. She watched the other cadets covertly. Bronze-haired Liami, who bounced in and out of beds with the same verve as she gobbled dessert treats on holidays. Cal and Deri, who could have starred in any of the romantic serial tragedies, always in one crisis of emotion or another. How they passed their courses was a constant topic of low-voiced wonder. Suave Abrek, who assumed that any woman he fancied would promptly swoon into his arms—despite frequent rebuffs and snide remarks from all the women cadets.

She wasn't even sure what she wanted. She and Caris, in the old days, watching Carin Coldae re-runs, had planned extravagant sexual adventures: all the handsome men in the galaxy, in all the exotic places, in the midst of saving planets or colonies or catching slavers. Was handsome really better? Liami seemed to have just as much fun with the plain as the handsome. And Abrek, undeniably handsome, but all too aware of it, was no fun at all. What kind of attraction was
that
kind, and not just the ordinary sort that made some people a natural choice for an evening of study or workouts in the gym? Or was the ordinary sort enough?

In the midst of this confusion of mind, she noticed that she was choosing to spend quite a bit of time with Marik Delgaesson, a senior cadet from somewhere on the far side of known space. She hadn't realized that human colonies spread that far, but he looked a lot more human than the heavyworlders. Brown eyes, wavy dark hair, a slightly crooked face that gave his grin a certain off-center appeal. Not really handsome, but good enough. And a superior gymnast, in both freeform and team competitions.

Sass thought about it. He might do. When their festival rotations came up at the same shift, and he asked her to partner him to the open theater production, she decided to ask him. It was hard to get started on the question, so they were halfway back to the Academy, threading their way between brightly-decorated foodstalls, when she brought it up. He gave her a startled look and led her into a dark alley behind one of the government buildings.

"Now. What did you say?" In the near dark, she could hardly see his expression.

Her mouth was dry. "I . . . I wondered if you'd . . . you'd like to spend the night with me."

He shook his head. "Sass, you don't want that with me."

"I don't?" Reading and conversation had not prepared her for
this
reaction to a proposal. She wasn't sure whether she felt insulted or hurt.

"I'm not. . . what I seem." He drew his heavy brows down, then lifted them in a gesture that puzzled Sass. People did both, but rarely like that.

"Can you explain that?"

"Well . . . I hate to disillusion you, but—" And suddenly he wasn't there: the tall, almost-handsome, definitely charming cadet senior she'd known for the past two years. Nothing was there—or rather, a peculiar arrangement of visual oddities that had her wondering what he'd spiked her mug with. Stringy bits of this and that, nothing making any sense, until he reassembled suddenly as a very alien shape on the wall. Clinging to the wall.

Sass fought her diaphragm and got her voice back. "You're—you're a Weft!" She felt cold all over: she had wanted to embrace
that
?

Another visual tangle, this time with some parts recognizable as they shifted toward human, and he stood before her, his face already wistful. "Yes. We . . . we usually stay in human form around humans. They prefer it. Though most don't prefer the forms we choose quite as distinctly as you did."

Her training brought her breathing back under full control. "It wasn't your form, exactly."

"No?" He smiled, the crooked smile she'd dreamed about the past nights. "You don't like my other one."

"I liked
you
," Sass said, almost angrily. "Your—your personality—"

"You liked what you thought I was—my human act." Now he sounded angry, too, and for some reason that amused her.

"Well, your human act is better than some who were born that way. Don't blame me because you did a good job."

"You aren't scared of me?"

Sass considered, and he waited in silence. "Not scared, exactly. I was startled, yes: your human act is damn good. I don't think you could do that if you didn't have some of the same characteristics in your own form. I'm not—I don't—"

"You don't want to be kinky and sleep with an alien?"

"No. But I don't want to insult an alien either, not without cause. Which I don't have."

"Mmm. Perceptive and courteous, as usual. If I were a human, Sass, I'd want
you
."

"If you were human, you'd probably get what you wanted."

"Luckily, my human shape has no human emotions attached; I can enjoy you as a person, Sass, but not wish to couple with you. We mate very differently, and in an act far more . . . mmm . . . 
biological
 . . . than human mating has become."

Sass shivered; this was entirely too clinical.

"But we do—though rarely—make friends, in the human sense, with humans. I'd like that."

All those books gave her the next line. "I thought I was supposed to say that—no thanks, but can't we just be friends?"

He laughed, seemingly a real laugh. "You only get to say that if you don't make the proposal in the first place."

"Fine." Sass put out her hands. "I have to touch you, Marik; I'm sorry if that upsets you, but I have to. Otherwise I'll never get over being afraid."

"Thank you." They clasped hands for a long moment: his warm, dry hands felt entirely human. She felt the pulse throbbing in his wrist. She saw it in his throat. He shook his head at her. "Don't try to figure it out, Sass. Our own investigators—they're not really much like human scientists—don't understand it either."

"A Weft. I had to fall in love with a damned Weft!" Sass gave him a wicked grin. "And I can't even brag about it!"

"You're not in love with me. You're a young human female with a nearly new five-year implant and a large dose of curiosity."

"Dammit, Marik! How old are you, anyway? You talk like an older brother!"

"Our years are different." And with that she had to be content, for the moment. Later he was willing to say more, a little more, and introduce her to the other Wefts at the Academy. By then she'd spotted two of them, sensitive to some signal she couldn't define. Like Marik, they were all superb gymnasts and very good at unarmed combat. This last, she found, they accomplished by minute shifts of form.

"Say you grab my shoulder," said Marik, and Sass obligingly grabbed his shoulder. Suddenly it wasn't
there
, in her grasp, and yet he'd not shifted to his natural form. He was still right in front of her, only his hand gripped her forearm.

"What did you do?"

"The beginning of the shift changes the surface location and density—and that's what the enemy has hold of, right? We're not where we're supposed to be, and we're not all there, so to speak. In combat, serious combat, we'd have no reason to hold too tightly to the human form anyway."

"Does it . . . uh . . . hurt, to stay in human form? Are you more comfortable in your own?"

Marik shrugged. "It's like a tight uniform: not painful, but we like to get out of it now and then." He shifted then and there, and Sass stared, fascinated as always.

"It doesn't bother you?" asked Silui, one of the other Wefts.

"Not any more. I wish I knew how you do it!"

"So do we." Silui shifted, and placed herself beside Marik. <> The question echoed in Sass's head. Of course. In their own form they hadn't the apparatus for human speech. But telepathy? She pushed that thought aside and watched as Silui and Marik crawled over and around each other. No more brown eyes and green, although something glittered that might be eyes of another sort. Shapes hard to define, because they were so outlandish . . . fivefold symmetry? She finally shook her head.

"Not by looking, I can't. Can you?"

"Oh yes." That was Gabril, the Weft who had not shifted. "Silui's got more graceful
sarfin
, and Marik
immles
better."

"That might help if I knew what
sarfin
and
immles
were," said Sass grumpily. Gabril laughed, and pointed out the angled stalklike appendages, and had Marik demonstrate an
immle
.

"Do you ever take heavyworlder shapes?" asked Sass.

"Not often. It's hard enough with you; the whole way of moving is so different. They're too strong; we can make holes in the walls accidentally."

"Can you take
any
shape?"

Silui and Marik reshifted to human, and joined the discussion aloud. "That's an argument we have all the time. Humans, yes, even heavyworlders, though we don't enjoy that. Ryxi is easier than humans, although the biochemistry causes problems. Our natural attention span is even longer than yours, but their brain chemistry interferes. Thek—" Marik looked at the others, as if asking a question.