Page 24 of Border Control

I wonder if he would?

Shaking my head, I down my coffee in one. I’m not contemplating a relationship with an alien. I’m not. Nighttime fantasies are allowed, of course, as long as I keep myself focused.

Once she’s finished her coffee, Ellen slips into oilskins, wrinkling her nose at my stretchy yoga pants. “Are you sure you want to be wearing those? I’m probably going to need to jump a few fences.”

“You are, absolutely. Me, I’m just company.” I pull on a borrowed jacket and gingerly select two wellies that look roughly like they came as a pair, although they’re so mud covered it’s hard to tell. I tap out small stones and spiders before sliding my feet in.

Ellen chuckles. “Come on, then. You can tell me what’s gone on here. Oh, hang on.” She looks up over the farm buildings, eyes narrowing. “Floss and her mate have roamed all night, and she tells me everything is fine.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“So, it turns out Floss is a starhound, an interstellar traveler in her own right. She got lost and left behind here when she was younger, and over time forgot who she really was, becoming an intelligent dog. Now she can talk to me in my head.” She pats her temple.

“Goodness.” Dom did mention something about being able to hear his friends’ thoughts. There’s a lot of telepathy flying around all of a sudden. “So she’s from Oloria too?”

“No, there are even more worlds out there.” Typical Ellen, though, she delivers that bombshell while unhooking the door to the chicken house and clucking for her hens to come out.

“That’s amazing!” I say.

Ellen doesn’t move.

“What is it?” I crane around her to see.

Ellen wordlessly points at the purple creature pecking away inside the small enclosure where the chickens are kept.

“Oh, that’s Old Mae.”

My friend rubs her temples. “Ohhhkay.”

“She had a glow up. Arabella can tell you more.” I wave the oversized chicken away, surreptitiously glancing toward the lean-to where the other aliens are. I see two purple and one red, black and silver android, all sleeping soundly.

Catching Ellen up on the ins and outs of the planning permission and what I’m going to do to fix it takes us up past the garden to the first fields of sheep. I can’t be seen to help too much: my contract with Clark and Gibson doesn’t allow me to offer legal services elsewhere, but I can file a notice for my bestie on the sly. The sheep seem okay as sheep go, plodding around and chewing, and clearly haven’t suffered from Arabella feeding them rather than Ellen.

“What about you?” I ask as she grabs a bale of silage from a small shed set next to the field.

“I don’t even know where to start.” She talks about Oloria, about the matriarchal society and the tension between men and women playing out in the games, and how the clones and their creators fit in.

I listen carefully, mulling over how laws might work on a world like that.

“And each clone has special powers or abilities,” Ellen went on. “Ilia explained all the ones here to me. Gara is a healer, Arture is a pilot, and the triplets—what he calls wave brothers—are enforcers, kind of like police.”

“Yes, Dom said,” I let slip before I clamp my lips shut.

Ellen latches onto it. “Oh?”

“I do talk to the aliens on occasion.” I try to act casual, or as casual as I can tramping round the countryside in borrowed welly boots. This is so not my natural habitat.

“Well, good,” she says, just a little smugly.

Like I'm going to get publicly involved with an alien the way she has. Still, one day I'd like to have a steady relationship like Ellen’s found, with a genuine partner. It'll be hard to find the perfect guy who accepts me for me. I have… sides to me. Sides which never meet. I’ve never shown anyone all my facets, too much like laying down a hand in poker. A gamble.

I don’t gamble. I make sure.

We crest the hill dominating Ellen's land and shade our eyes from the sunrise, which finally deigns to make an appearance. It’s pretty up here, and I can feel like a Jane Austen protagonist for a little bit.

At least until the wind whips my hair into a frenzy. I’ll have to spray the hell out of it to get it to behave again.

“Who’s that?” Ellen asks, pointing down toward the lake, but as she has her hair sensibly pulled back, she has the advantage of me.