Orbital Station, Earth
“Even Warriors need rest every once in a while.”
J made a face, which only registered as flattening his lined mouth even more.
“That’s what Kaidou told me you said to him once, when he was still a kid.” Renais stood with her hands on her hips, looking up defiantly at the stork-like alien. “He said it struck him because he’d never heard of anything like that out of you before.”
“I will not have my own words used against me.”
“Oh stop, you act like I’m asking you to dismantle your ship and stay here forever.” J’s ship was moored to the station, placidly floating, and always pointing into space toward its next destination.
“You are trying to stall me from leaving.”
Through clenched teeth, she replied, “I’m inviting you to go on a relaxing vacation with me to my hometown.” And then, “Oh don’t make that face at me.”
To the casual observer, J’s face was made of unmovable stone, but Renais had spent enough time with him to notice even the smallest twitch of the features of the visible bottom half of his face. She’d spent the past few months aboard his ship with him as her sole source of entertainment, and cracking his steely expression was her new favorite hobby. And she was quickly mastering it, much to J’s chagrin.
“I am not spending a moment longer than necessary on this accursed planet, temptress. And that is that.”
La Barre, France
Renais had threw her bags down in the guest house and flung open the doors to the balcony overlooking the rows of vines. “Breathe in that fresh vineyard air!”
J was unsure of what to make of any of it. The entire trip had left him with quite a lot of culture shock and exhaustion. “How did I let you convince me?”
After taking in the view, Renais turned toward J, leaning back with her elbows on the balcony railing. “And you don’t look half-bad in your Earth garb! How does it feel not being so spiky?”
J tugged at the collar of his turtleneck sweater. “Vulnerable.”
“Good!” And then, “Don’t give me that face.”
The owner of the vineyard, Renais’ maternal grand-oncle, greeted the newly arrived couple, kissing Renais on the cheek. He’d offer the same greeting to the tall radical-looking beatnik, but this guy was coming off very foreign and VERY uncomfortable. So Oncle shook the stranger’s hand instead.
“Good to meet you, Jay was it? What do you do?”
“I am a Warrior.”
At Oncle’s confused face, Renais cleared her throat, “He’s the captain of his own ship. Fancies himself a bit of an adventurer.”
“Ahh, spend a lot of time on the water then?”
“The air, mostly.”
Renais quickly added, “Er, by which he means to say, he’s a pilot too. Seaplane. Goes with the boat.”
“Huh! Ship captain and pilot! You know, these old bones could use some valiant help with the harvest tomorrow morning.” Oncle smiled with kind eyes. J felt like he should give a tiny polite smile, but only Renais noticed it.
As soon as the first light of the morning reached J’s awareness, he sat straight up. Still dark out, but the sky was starting to lighten, and in the same bed, Renais continued to snore. Suddenly, an alarming vocalization from the farmland, and J was instantly out on the balcony to find the source of the noise. His cybernetic eyes had no trouble seeing it in the early morning dimness, before it crowed again.
“Co! Coricooo!”
The sound caused Renais to shift in bed, stretch, then relax back to sleep. J by her side, in a low but commanding voice, “Renais.”
“Hm…” And then sitting up in urgency, “HM?? What? What happened?”
“There is some kind of loud…Earth…goose outside.”
Renais’ alarmed face relaxed into an annoyed simmer. “Sometimes the crowing comes from inside the house.”
As J systematically harvested the wine grapes from the vines, Renais and Oncle watched from the balcony. “Strange one you got there. Where’d he come from?”
Lost in a vague fantasy, Renais dreamily replied, “The Red Planet.”
Again, Oncle’s confused face. He was getting tired of these weird games the kids were playing. “You don’t mean…Mars?”
“Ah! Er.” Quick Renais, think. “Well. Yeah, kind of, it’s a funny story. See, he used to work for NASA.”
“NASA.”
“Yeah.”
“Sea captain. Pilot. NASA.”
“He’s got a nice curriculum vitae. Anyway. J worked in the Mars department. Did you know that days on Mars are 25 hours long? So Mars scientists, wanting to be in sync with the part of Mars that’s facing the sun, actually end up wearing two wrist watches — one for Earth, and one for Mars. So every day, their shift is one hour later. Eventually, their lives become de-synchronized from Earth time. They do it long enough, they become a little…well…strange.” She trailed off from the end of her long lie.
“Cher, all you had to do was tell me he’s American. That explains everything.”
“À votre santé!” Followed by the clinking of Renais and Oncle’s wine glasses. J was encouraged to skip the ritual this time, as the first time resulted in a shattered glass. “See? Gentle, like that.”
“Right.” J held his second glass carefully. He found himself actually looking forward to experiencing what the end result of all of this work was. Oncle had taken them on a tour of the process of turning the sour little purple spheres into this liquid. He was fond of the deep red color.
Renais, after having tried her sip of the wine, “Go on J, give it a taste.”
The aroma of the liquid gave J pause, but he gave it a taste anyway—
Renais held J’s wild hair out of his face as his entire body tensed and heaved. He retched into the grass outside the tastery. She rubbed his back. “I don’t get it. It was only one sip.”
“You—hurk! You poisoned me?? Why would you poison me? You took me on vacation just to poison me, I should have—hurk! known you treacherous Earthlings would do this.” His voice became more venomous as he put together whatever puzzle pieces had formed in his brain.
This was pathetic. She’d seen J beaten, chained up, burned, and near death. And still somehow this was the lowest she’d ever seen him. “It’s not poison, you walnut. Humans have been drinking this for centuries.”
“You all built up a resistance to—hurk! rotten fruit!”
“Alright. How about, when you take off from here, you bring me along.”
This created a pause in J, even his retching stopped. “…You mean that? You want to come with me?”
“Yeah! Then you can make me try whatever fucked up alien beverages you drink.”