Page 6 of Azyr: Drifiting for Her

On the next morning, I tried to give him away.

“Reassign the file,” I told Seattle in my most reasonable voice. “Conflict of interest on the human side. Surely somebody up there can take one Veyathi intro.”

“There’s nobody up here.” Priya’s counterpart didn’t miss a beat. “There’s nobody anywhere. You know there’s no one else, Astoria. You cut the ribbon on the other liaison with the budget cut.”

“I didn’t personally cut anything.” I pinched the bridge of my nose as her reaction confirmed my worry.

“The protocol needs a credentialed officer to run the window. You are the credentialed officer. Declining the match does not get you out of the paperwork. I’m sorry.” After a moment, she added a familiar piece of wisdom. “Ruth always said the job has a sense of humor.”

“Ruth said a lot of things.” I hung up by slamming my finger down on the switchhook and sat there holding the receiver like it had personally offended me.

One month.

My Priya, the Portland one, leaned in the doorway with two coffees and an expression I didn’t care for. “So.” She set one coffee on my desk. “The alien.”

“Don’t.”

“Ninety-one point three.” She raised an audacious eyebrow at me.

“Priya.”

“I’m only saying, historically, when you tell clients to make sure they won’t regret any quick decisions, you don’t usually mean it as a threat.”

“Reassign him to Eugene.”

“Eugene closed.”

“Exactly.” I took the coffee. Her smirk didn’t move at all.

I did what any professional does when they’ve run out of moves to avoid a situation. I made rules. Fixed times, a fresh agenda every morning, and a clipboard, which I set on the desk between us like a wall, and behind which I fully intended to hide for four weeks.

It lasted eleven minutes.

He came down at ten and folded himself into the client chair. His gaze danced over me as his skin did the thing. In the office light he went from drowned-watercolor pale to a deep live blue along the jaw and the backs of his hands. I’d met a Veyathi once before, so I understood the color was a tell he had not yet learned to bluff. I was going to have to stop paying attention to his flirtations and attraction to me, or we were both finished.

“Right.” I tapped the agenda. “First-contact orientation. Earth customs, then on-world logistics, and I’ll need you to hold questions until the end.”

“Why twelve photographs?”

“... I’m sorry?”

“On your wall. The record says you have counseled forty people through the program.” He nodded at the frames. “Why do twelve get frames and the rest do not?”

“That is not on the agenda.”

“You made the agenda.”

“I did, and I put it right here so we could stick to necessary topics like on-planet transit. It’s quite a riveting topic, and I would love to walk you through.”

“Before we do.” His mouth tipped, warm. “The garden. Did you water it again this morning?”

“You’ve been here five days. How do you know when I water my garden?”

“I know when everyone waters everything.” His tone made it a normal fact to hold about a person. “You do it before you sit down. You do it when you have decided not to think about a thing.” A beat between words. “You are thinking about a thing.”

I set the pen down. “Are you profiling me?”

“Yes.”