Aftermath - Ann Aguirre [53]
As she returned, she saw me sipping from the cup. There is a trick to it, one it took me turns to perfect, so the fluid finds its way truly through the camouflage and into my own body where it can do some good. She seemed pleased by my trust, though why she should want it I would not understand until much later.
“I have a friend who runs a shop off the market,” she told me. “He takes in broken things and makes them new again.”
As do you, I thought.
“I would like to meet him.”
In that way, I came to be apprenticed to Franco Schmidt, who, shortly after I met him, bade me call him Smitty, then to get to work. Like Trapper, he cared nothing for licenses or work permits. He was akin to the acerbic old man I’d lost, and I found myself at home. Perhaps I could only find myself when I served others.
Smitty offered me a room above his shop. In his early days, he had used it himself, but now he did well enough with the repair of broken things that he could afford a better dwelling. As it offered plenty of privacy, it suited my needs, as I regularly regenerated the camouflage that safeguarded me from those who would call me monster.
In that way, I learned another trade. Days turned to weeks, weeks to months, and months to turns. It was not the place I’d wanted when I set out to start anew, but it was a place nonetheless. I was safe.
When things changed again, it had been three turns since Adele found me in the marketplace. Oh, she had checked on me from time to time, but this visit would alter my circumstances in ways I could never have imagined.
She came into the shop, smelling of hyacinths. I had altered my design slightly, so my olfactory sense was not dulled as it had been. The light perfume could not cover the faint smell of morbidity, but I have learned to overlook that. Your kind cannot help that your cells are constantly dying and flaking away; you leave bits of yourselves everywhere you go. At first I found it grotesque and distracting, but it is no worse than what I must do with the camouflage to walk among you.
Of course, my tactile senses were muted, so I felt nothing but pressure when she shook my hand, but I could do nothing about that. Smitty had gone home early, as he often did by that point, leaving me to tend the latecomers and lock up before I went upstairs.
Her smile still held kindness. “Are you settling in, Vel?”
The familiarity surprised me, though I had told her it was my name, turns past. It was rare enough that anyone spoke it. Half the patrons of the repair bay called me Young Smitty, either in jest or lack of interest. I did not object; it had been so long since I spoke with anyone who cared about the truth of my naming, or who knew how to make a proper wa, that I sometimes felt like a spirit forgotten by the Iglogth. It is a hard thing to cast your shadow on alien earth, far from that which sheltered your ancestors. And yet . . .
And yet, I chose it.
“Yes,” I said. “I am happy here.”
“Are you?” she asked.
Such a question. Even now, I ask myself why she cared. But that was her way, looking after such strays the universe brought to her. Adele thought it Mary’s will.
I regarded her, puzzled.
“You don’t seem happy. Smitty tells me you have made no friends, and you seek no new companions. All you do is work.”
“What more is there?” It was a naïve question, based on inhuman values. Even social intercourse between Ithtorians is fueled by what may be accomplished by it.
I should have said something else; I should have kept silent. But for all my turns among them, I had not lived as a human, merely passed. I had never come to understand you, nor had I tried. Humans seemed soft and fragile, bursting with irrational impulses that drove them to excess. I might as well attempt to comprehend