7.
 Korinta had her easel up and her paints out on a huge sandstone boulder just off a narrow winding road in the foothills of a small range of hills. Against an intense blue sky, she found herself surrounded by house-sized boulders that had been washed into rounded oblong lozenges by the primordial sea and now lay forgotten under the yellow sun of this system. Some extra sense told her to look down from her perch toward the Ford, and there stood a weird little man in tan explorer clothing looking up at her with binoculars. She quickly looked down at herself to make sure she was fully clothed, so intense was his posture behind the stare. Of course, she had on her knee-high rodeo boots, loose jeans, a masculine looking shirt with tiny red and white checks that made her slender tan wrists and long hands look all the more feminine. Nevertheless, she raised one hand to close whatever tiny bit of exposure her collar might be affording to the flat center of her smooth young chest. “Can I help you?” she said in a mixture of distaste and alarm.
“I was trying to see if you had any Government equipment with you. You know, Area 51, that sort of thing. Weird things that end in ‘meter’ and generally involve dangerous particles.”
“I’m trying to paint, and I need my peace and quiet. Go away.”
“I’m trying to uncover Government secrets, and I need information.”
“I don’t have any information. Go away.”
He clambered steadfastly closer up the rocks. “I just want to give you my business card.”
“I don’t have a phone so I can’t call you if I see any aliens.”
“That’s okay.” He arrived, panting, and brushed dust from his tan jumpsuit. He was a really young man, she could see with thick curly dark hair. Robust genes, she thought. “I’m Rodney Soltan.” He stuck out a hand. He had pale hands and looked as though he might fall down, he was panting so hard. Reluctantly, she shook it, leaving a trace of wet ochre on his fingers. He looked at his fingers and then at her. “Thank you, I’ll treasure that handshake long.”
Korinta accepted his card and laid it aside. She glanced covertly at an electronic toolpad amid the brushes and little cans in her kit. On the pad’s indicator space were five hair-thin concentric ochre rings. If the ochre marker-ink on analyzing his body chemistry had found Mr. Rodney Soltan were someone to be alarmed about, the entire indicator space would have silently winked on and off in glowing green. But it remained a set of ochre rings.
“You are a funny man, Mr. Soltan.”
“I am disadvantaged by my less than robust size and killer looks, so I am forced to improvise using charm and humor.”
She laughed. “Well, you certainly possess some of those qualities. Sit down and pour yourself a glass of water. I have several bottles in my cooler.”
“Thank you,” he said wiping his brow with a dark cloth, “I think I just might.” He fumbled with the cooler for a minute or two, unable to figure out how to open it.
A tall woman compared to him, she stepped over in a few strides and touched the appropriate places on the locksurface, and it opened with a sigh, emitting a trailing cloud of icy vapor. She took out a plastic bottle that glowed faintly blue with sunlight shining through pure water. “Go on, drink from it,” she said. “I don’t mind. You don’t have flu germs or anything, do you?” She knew that her saliva would kill any little critters he might be harboring, but no need to tell him that. “So what makes you think there are aliens out here?”
He sipped long and hard, holding the bottle over his face like a telescope. At last, he set it down and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Sightings,” he said. “We have people all around the country, watching, reporting, calling us. There has lately been a lot of strange activity around here, all of a sudden.”
“Really?” She started to sketch in faint outlines with a very hard charcoal tip, sighting often at the surrounding boulders. But she stayed perked up and listening to him.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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