King of Swords (The Starfolk) Read Free Page B

cheerfulness.
    “You don’t feel cold?”
    “Not much. Heat slaughters me.”
    “And you’ve healed already?”
    “Almost. I’m not quite well enough to try rape yet, but stick around.”
    Surprisingly, she laughed out loud. “Rigel, you are the most interesting b… man I have met in years! I have a couple of doughnuts, and I’ll make some coffee.”
    “Turn around,” he said. He rose, squeezing his hair to get the water out of it. He combed it with his fingers so that itcovered his ears, and then fastened it at the nape of his neck, wading ashore toward the towel and jeans.
    Mira was standing with her back to him, her eyes fixed on the trees. “I believe you, you know. We can’t heal like you can, and we can’t turn ourselves off the way you do. You’re either an alien or a Superman.”
    “Flattery won’t help,” he said, close enough behind her to make her jump. “And ET can’t call home when he doesn’t know where home is. Actually my mommy was a Sasquatch.”
    She turned her head to smile up at him and did a double take.
    “Never seen white eyes before?”
    She smiled and patted his arm. “I don’t care what planet you’re from, you’re a nice guy, Rigel, and that’s what matters. Okay?”
    “Okay, for starters,” he said. “We are fully compatible with your species, earthling female.”
    She smiled politely. Human females had an infallible instinct for detecting male virgins, and he’d never had any success with pickup lines.

Chapter 3
    A s Mira was making the Winnebago shipshape, ready to roll, Rigel inspected the dead bear and even deader bicycle to make sure that he had left nothing that could identify him. His name had never been on the guitar or its bag. His blood must be distinctive, of course, but even if anyone thought to analyze the stains in the mud, there would be no way of tracing it back to him. His DNA might match with some X-File in the Flying Saucer Department, of course, but that would do them little good.
    The campground workers were going to get a nasty shock when they found a bear killed out of season with its brains blown out of its head and a bloody stab wound in its chest. Inquiries Would Be Launched. Even the Mounties weren’t likely to assume that the bear had been riding the bike and playing the guitar… or that it had somehow managed to shoot and stab itself. Small wonder that Mira was eager to make an early start.
    He couldn’t turn the brute over to see if there was a matching wound on the other side, but what he remembered was a sensation of driving a blade in about fifteen centimeters, notall the way through. He had had no such blade, and he would have written the memory off as an illusion, wishful thinking caused by the stress of the attack, except that
something
had obviously made that wound.
    As they drove off along the highway and the sky turned to blue, Mira said, “Tell me about yourself.”
    “I’m an ecotourist from Aldebaran Seventeen. Why do you carry a gun on vacation?”
    She smiled at the road ahead. “Fair enough. And it’s only fair to warn you that even being seen with me can be dangerous. I’m a private eye. I worked for a man who ran a detective agency in San Francisco. I fell for Micah’s line and married him. It went sour after a couple of years, and he’s one of those possessive types who just can’t let go and accept that I’m not
his
. I’ve had court orders and injunctions galore, but he knows all the tricks. Two of the guys I dated after the separation were beaten to jelly in dark alleys. Nothing was ever proved—either Micah hired goons to do his dirty work or he bought alibis, no way of telling which. He knows lawyers who make pretzels look like straightedges. I couldn’t stand it any more, so I decided to run. I came up here to Canada.”
    Her story was fishier than a salmon farm. “Is he so bad at his job that he won’t be able to track you down, then?”
    “He’s extremely good, but I know all the same tricks