Only Human by Chris Reher Page A

me."
    Tychon shrugged. "They have good
taste." He lifted a hatch to the engine chamber. “I’ll be cleaning sand
out of my filters for a while. Try not to run off together.”
    Anders smiled after him affectionately,
then leaned back toward Nova. "So you two kids aren't playing nice-nice?
Is that all you are to him? An able pilot?"
    "Of course that's all! What are you suggesting?"
    "The moment I saw you two together I
thought you were making it."
    She rose. "We're not making anything.
He can hardly get his wife out of his head."
    "Delphians mate for life,” Anders
shrugged. “But that doesn’t make him a monk. You two might as well get cozy."
    She cleared the table by stacking their
trays in the recycler. "You are getting awfully personal."
    He pointed at himself. "Do I offend? I
am merely trying to be objective."
    "And interfering."
    "Is it because he’s blue?"
Anders' voice suddenly carried a nasty chill. For the first time this morning
the smile had left his face. "Because he's Delphian you think I'm talking
nonsense? Because his hair is blue? Because he'll live longer than you? Not on
this job; you guys are on a suicide ride. So they can play with their heads
better than we can. What difference does that make? I've known Ty for a long
time. He looks at you in a way he looks at very few people. He just has no use
for most of us, Human or otherwise."
    She picked up some of the weapons they had
used yesterday and placed them on the table. He began to disassemble one of
them, looking for traces of K’larn dust in the works.
    “Well maybe that is it,” she said. “I am Human.
I know how Delphians feel about off-worlders. He has no use for me, either.”
    “If you’re going to work with him, you’ll
need to stop trying to figure out what he’s thinking. Delphians have a knack
for hiding what’s going on in their heads. You won’t ever know what he’s
feeling if he doesn’t want you to.”
    “Yeah, I noticed he’s hard to read.”
    “He tries to get along with us Humans. More
than most of them do. I think he thinks we’re pets or something. Throws us a
bone now and again.”
     “And so you think he’s interested in this Human? I doubt it! He's been around for seventy years. What could he
possibly find interesting about me? He’s certainly not going to risk his
commission with an officer under his command.”
    "Seventy-two, but it's all relative.
And don't cite me rules about fraternizing out here. That didn't stop the brass
from making you bunkmates.”
    "Rules exist for a reason."
    He shrugged. "Depends where you break
them. It'll never be acceptable on Delphi. They would never greet one of us as
equal, no matter how polite they are. The last thing they want is for a
Delphian to prefer an off-world mate instead of choosing one of their own.”
    “Oh? Are they worried about half-humans
overrunning Delphi?”
    “Impossible, in any case. You’ve got the
right parts, but not the right genes. Delphians are just a bit farther up the
evolutionary scale. I think the reason they don’t want us running off with
their own is their weird reproductive cycles. For such an old civilization, Delphi
has an amazingly low population, probably because they live so long. I think
this is also the reason why they don't want the Union around, taking their
people off-planet. They just don't have as many babies as other races to replace
them all." He lowered his voice. "That means they like to mate as
often as they can. I hear they're extremely virile.”
    Nova snapped gun parts together with
renewed efficiency. "I don't know why we're even discussing this!"
    He watched her, amused by her indignation.
"Because I'm trying to interfere and match make?"
    "Don't bother!"
    He laughed. "Come, tell me that you
don't find him tall, blue and handsome. How long do you think he can live with
you and still keep his circuits from overloading? He is a healthy male of a
compatible species. I've been aboard less than twelve hours and I'm