Free Dark Energy by Robison Wells Page A

anything she said. We had too many questions, and I don’t think any of us expected the questions to be answered—at least not to our satisfaction. We still didn’t even know what the Guides were. We didn’t know what had happened on that ship. We didn’t know what plans the president had for “integrating” the Guides into our society, or what plans the Guides had for us. Maybe that was the biggest question—we knew they wanted to teach us:were we supposed to learn from these two? From Suski and Coya?
    And why weren’t they wearing shoes? They were wearing everything else. Why not shoes? Of everything going on, that pissed me off the most. I don’t know why.
    I was shaken from my thinking when both Rachel and Brynne looked at me, one from each side. I knew I’d missed something.
    â€œWhat?” I whispered.
    â€œWeren’t you listening?” Rachel asked. “They’re putting the girl in our suite—in Nikki’s bed.”
    â€œYou’re kidding.”
    â€œThere are other empty rooms,” Brynne said. “Maybe they think that because your dad’s in NASA, you’ll be a good fit?”
    â€œIt’s probably because you’re both supersmart,” I said. “They want to make a good impression.”
    â€œWe have a new succubus,” Rachel murmured, turning back to look at the girl.
    She wasn’t as pale as the boy, and her hair wasn’t that odd shade of bleached yellow. If she’d been wearing shoes and didn’t have the translator, I might have mistaken her for a human. Very probably.
    I wouldn’t have mistaken Suski.
    Let’s get one thing out of the way right up front. Yes, he looked albino, but he was a good-looking boy. Man. Hewas a man. I don’t know how old he was, but once you get muscles like that, you’re a man. His neck looked like it could do its own weight lifting.
    Coya looked tough herself—broad-shouldered and built like a gymnast—but Suski was built like a god. Maybe not a Zeus or an Apollo, but certainly a demigod: a Hercules or Achilles.
    Eventually, the headmistress stopped yammering on and everyone was dismissed—everyone except the people who were going to be rooming with the aliens. Brynne, Rachel, and I worked our way up to the front, and three boys I only sort of knew—Malcolm, Joshua, and Eric—came from the other side of the room. Rachel pushed me to the front, and I pushed Brynne ahead of me. She crossed the stage to where the headmistress stood with the two Guides and reached out to take Suski’s hand.
    â€œMy name is Brynne,” she said. “You are?”
    There was a pause—I assumed the translator was working.
    â€œHu Suski lessina,” he said. His voice was really deep. A computer voice said, with some mild inflection: “I am Suski.”
    Suski looked at me, then reached toward my blue hair.
    â€œK’uirska.”
    â€œBlue,” the translator said.
    â€œKurska,” I repeated poorly, and held out my hair for him to feel.
    He smiled a little at my attempt at his language as he feltmy hair between his snow-white fingers. I could see that his hands were rough and I wondered what kind of job he had on the spaceship to toughen him up so much.
    I reached out my hand and he took it in his, letting my hair drop back into place. Then I pointed him to Rachel, who shook his hand eagerly.
    â€œRachel,” she said, patting herself on the chest. She was a pale redhead and Brynne was a pale blonde; I could see that both of them fit in more with the people we’d seen emerging from the ship. But I was the dark-skinned girl with blue hair, and Coya reached out to touch it the way her brother had.
    â€œAlice,” I said to her as we moved down the line and shook her hand. Her grip was just as strong as Suski’s.
    â€œCoya,” she said to me, patting her own chest, just as I had done. The translator said,