Tea

               Archer couldn’t sleep much that night. The konji cheese wasn’t sitting well with the honey ale. It reminded him of a night he and Porthos had spent on Enterprise, eating too much cheddar and drinking one too many beers, on a night he was not in the mood for biped company. He laid in a bed Riaan had made, looking at walls she’d decorated with unique handmade drawings, listening to Laskin snore across the room on a cot. Samuels had the other bed; she was fast asleep like she’d just run 100 kilometers.

               “I know we’ve talked about this before, son. This isn’t a decision we made overnight. It doesn’t make it any easier, I know. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, letting your Dad go. But it’s the last gift I can give to him. We can give to him: his dignity.”  Jonathan walked around in small circles, frustrated as hell. “Genetic engineering was banned in the 21^st century, for good reason. Medicine’s come a long way, but is far from perfect. If there was something I could do I would do it, son. But genes are what they are.”

               “Did I have it? Did you change me before I was born?” he asked defiantly, desperately, staring ahead into nothing.

               “No, and no.”

               Archer woke suddenly at the sound of a bird’s call just as the sun began to warm up the day. With no point in trying to get back to sleep, he rose quietly and crept outside.  The moist, chilled air cooled his imaginary fever. He watched a konji cart passing on the street at the end of the long path to the house. The silence was broken only by the sounds of wild creatures in the trees, bushes, on the ground, and in the air around him. He wanted to think about how he was going to expose the Tellarites, and why they had brought nuclear technology to this planet. Wanted to think and actually thinking were two very different things. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so distracted on a mission.

               “I thought about you a lot, Jon,” came a soft voice from behind. Jonathan turned slowly, greeted by Riaan’s smile and a cup of hot tea with a vague jasmine scent. He had no words. “I’d look up in the sky at night, and wonder if you were on this star, or that star, or that one.”

               “Well, I um, thought maybe it was time to…stop by for some tea, thanks,” he stammered, holding the cup a little higher, and then taking a sip.

               “I never really expected to see you again.”

               “To say I’ve been busy would be an understatement.” He looked around, up at the sky, at an imaginary sound in the bushes, but finally dared to read her face. Her eyes were warm, with gentle arched brows like frames on modern art. Her cheeks showed a hint of pink, the same as her lips, turned up in a placid smile. The morning light was kind to her refined features, casting little shadows from the crests above her temples that became lost in the waves of her hair.  “You’ve built quite a life over the years.”

               “You might say that.”

               The two stood in the morning light, the uncomfortable silence growing while the question remained unasked and unanswered.  The tea was different this morning than the night before.

               “I didn’t tell Kellam, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

               Actually, Jonathan didn’t care one bit at that moment if Kellam knew he wasn’t an Akalli, but her mention did remind him that the truth wasn’t always something to be announced.

               “Samuels and Laskin aren’t my children,” he blurted out. “They’re here with me to find out about the fission reactors. Where they came from, why, and who –“

               “I was up last night, wondering if that’s how you came to be sitting at my dinner table. Kellam adores you. He’s been so excited to meet another man of intelligence around here he can talk to. He’s quite a character, my husband.”

               Archer buried that thought as deep as possible. To tell the truth, in this case, would be to hurt more than one person.

               “I like him, Riaan. He’s a good man. I’m glad you found him.” Archer noticed a small bench and sat down, feeling a little weak from the poor sleep and the aura before him. “I’m glad I found him.”

               “You’re still not a very good liar,” she said, sitting down on the bench.

               “I’m serious. If I hadn’t, I might not be sitting here with you right now. And, of course, I need to find out about the reactors.”

               “Yes, technology.” Riaan took a deep breath. Her velvety eyes turned a little hard. “What is it about our world that makes it such a magnet for you aliens? We’re just out here minding our business when this monster of a thing seems to appear from nowhere and I don’t trust it, Jon, I don’t. This didn’t come from our own university.”

               Her vulnerability was not something he remembered. This intelligent scientist of a woman seemed defeated, momentarily.  

               “They tell us it did. That it came from the minds of professors and inventors. People love electricity, so they want to believe it. I hate it, Jon, I hate what it’s done. At the same time, I know we must advance to our fullest potential. But not like this. Not from the outside.”

               “You’ve mentioned your suspicions to Kellam. He and Berrigaan think you’re a little imaginative over space travelers?”

               “They don’t believe me,” Riaan laughed. “They think I don’t even believe myself. It’s just for fun to talk about to them. I could talk about space ships all day and they’d just play along. If I told them you captained a star ship they’d not believe me. The reactors are a huge secret. I just know they can’t be an Akalli invention. We had no need, but now a lot of drudgery is gone and we can never go back.”

               “You could if you had to,” Jonathan countered.

               “Sure, but we’d always know what was missing. Lights, machines, fast transports.” She finished the last bit of tea in her cup, and took Jonathan’s since his was also empty, then stood up.

               “I wish things were…different,” Riaan said. “In a lot of ways,” she added.

               The front door opened and Kellam appeared on the porch.

               “Good morning you two!” he called at them. “Stealin’ my girl, Jon?” Kellam walked up to the two of them, smiled, and punched Jonathan in the arm.  He leaned over and kissed Riaan, then handed her some kind of muffin biscuit, and gave one to Jon also.

               “We were just talking about that old reactor thing,” she said.

               “Yeah, uh, we’re going to head home soon,” Jon added. “I think I have enough gold for a konji cart out that way; won’t be too much walking.”

               “Stay for something to eat before you go,” Riaan insisted.