Page 28 of Alien Haven

Before the door to the back porch closed behind her, she heard Sara confirm her suspicions by muttering, “Yeah, that’s what he’d do, bless his heart.”

* * * *

“Replacing doohickeys and whatchamacallits again?” Charity hopped off the hovercart and trotted to Detodev.

He awarded her the briefest of glances. He dismissed her and bent to the field monitor spilling its guts on the tilled ground where he knelt. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’ve never heard of such components.”

“Crabby. You look tired. How late did you guys stay up? Where did you go after you left? Was it somewhere fun? Did you crack a smile?” She flopped down to sit cross-legged beside him.

“Ilid dropped us off. His parents were expecting him, he said.” Detodev tossed his head to swing the long braid hanging over his work out of the way. “Do you always ask a hundred questions before letting someone answer?”

“Sometimes I ask a thousand. You’re cleaning the circuit board?”

“They get gunked up faster than anything else. Half the breakdowns are due to dirt getting in the circuit boards.”

“Show me and I’ll help.”

“You?” He finally looked at her.

She scowled at his disbelief. “What do you mean ‘you’? I can handle delicate objects. Have you ever manually calibrated a priceless antique cadioptric telescope? I have, thank you so much for asking. I’ve also disassembled loads of telescopes and put them together again. By hand.”

“Wouldn’t have figured you for the manual labor type, starry-eyed college girl. Don’t you have the heavens to gaze at?”

“Stop making my eyes roll so hard at your obvious attempt to convince me to leave. I’m getting a headache.”

She watched him dip a brush barely bigger than a sewing needle in a solution to clear grit from the circuitry. She selected a similar brush and tweezers from the folding leather case next to him. She used the tweezers to extract another paper-thin circuit board from the field monitor, laid it delicately on her pantleg, and set to work. She glanced at how Detodev worked from time to time to make sure she was cleaning it properly.

After a minute, he used his set of tweezers to pluck the board from her custody.

“Hey! I’m not messing it up.”

Detodev looked at it closely and grunted. He set it on her pantleg again. “No, you aren’t. You’re actually doing a pretty decent job.”

Wait until you see how I bake a pie, you big grouch. You’ll literally eat your words.“I’m a fast learner. I also spent a lot of time assisting my sister on her projects. She builds micro machines. We’re talking nanos you have to look at through a microscopic holo. I bet I can solder faster than you and with greater precision.”

“I’m happy for you. Don’t you have anything else to do?”

The man who’d hovered at the edges of their bar group and had occasionally darted in their midst was clearly gone. He wanted her gone too.

Tough cookies, jerk. “You realize the more you try to scare me off, the more I’m likely to hang on like a tick?” She resumed cleaning.

“What’s a tick?”

“Oh joy, they didn’t revive those horrible little monsters. Score one for Haven.” Her com buzzed for attention, and she set her work down before grabbing it from a pocket. “Hey, it’s Ilid! Hi, Ilid. I was about to com you.”

She was aware of Detodev gazing at her. “No, you weren’t. You were cleaning a circuit board.”

“Well duh, I was going to com him when I was done. Ilid, you’re on speaker, by the way.”

Ilid chuckled, his deep voice giving her a pleasant shiver. “Is that Detodev?”

“His evil twin. Nice Detodev is apparently hibernating.”

“Oh, sorry to hear it. Hi, Evil Detodev.”

“Hello, Ilid. Feel free to take her somewhere I’m not.” The Nobek sighed.

“Miss Behavior giving you a hard time?”

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