Fit

“Relax child,” Byr snapped at me. She was like a pushy grandmother. “You keep tensing every muscle in your back. I’m having to guess what lines to measure already, don’t make this any harder.”

I’d gotten measured for clothes once before when I was fifteen. My mom had been given a medal, what kind I couldn’t remember, and my parents had wanted me to have clothes nice enough to attend the ceremony.

Fifteen-year-old boys grew though, and the suit didn’t fit me anymore. It had felt a bit like a waste with how quickly I’d grown out of it. The time and bother that had gone into measuring the fit just hadn’t seemed worth it then.

Now? My attitude had certainly changed, but so had the circumstances. I really wanted clothes that didn’t have holes in them. It wasn’t just the cold either. What I’d been wearing just wasn’t mine or I didn’t want it to be. The three flavors of outfit I had were: the clothes I’d been wearing when I was abducted, clothes taken from other abductees, or haphazard miscellaneous Farnata wear. Only the first of those weren’t too small, but size had nothing to do with why I wouldn’t be comfortable in those clothes ever again.

I shifted my leg reflexively, just a bit, and the Farnata tailor flicked me on the back of my head.

“Freeze!” she said, “this ends faster the less you move.”

“Sorry, [Ms.]…” I trailed off. She was definitely female, like Nai. But my lessons with Tasser hadn’t really covered parts of speech like that. Did I call her ‘Ms.’? Was there a Farnata equivalent.

“Byr,” she reminded me, pretending to be lightly offended.

“I remember your name,” I said. “But I wasn’t sure if there was a word that’s supposed to go with it.”

She knelt down to measure my other foot and ankle, how it bent. “A word like ‘ miz ’?” she asked wryly.

“It’s a respect word you use for people depending on who they—never mind. It’s from my home planet. It was just habit.”

Byr gave a low chuckle, she sounded like an alien who’d smoked for thirty years. Did all Farnata voices age like that? “You’re talking about honorifics ,” she said. “The Farnata don’t use them anymore. Casti use them though.”

“Like with the ranks?” Even I’d fallen into the habit of prefacing Serral’s name with ‘ Ase ’ just because everyone else did. The only Casti I knew that didn’t use rank address almost religiously was Tasser. I hadn’t realized it at the time, but even Nemuleki spoke the rank of anyone who didn’t share hers.

“Ranks in the military aren’t quite what I’m talking about, but they’re similar,” Byr told me, “here, lift your foot and step up.”

She put a stool in front of me and I did as she told me.

Measuring from toe, around the ankle, to the back of my knee, she broke out into a toothy grin. “…Oh, I am good at what I do.”

“How close were you?”

“Not even off by a quarter inch.”

Obviously not Earth inches, but it was close. This wasn’t technically the first time Byr had measured me. We’d sent photos ahead of us for her to make preliminary designs for. I remembered taking the photos with Dyn and Tasser. The camera had been like a large lunchbox, and I hadn’t believed them that it was their best camera at first. Then they hadn’t believed me when I’d talked about smartphone cameras.

“Have you had to do this often?” I asked, “making clothes based of pictures and tweaking them afterwards?”

“Do you do things like this often?” she retorted. She was a very sarcastic Farnata, but in a way that felt finely aged, like a really chill grandmother who didn’t have the patience anymore to bother with anything too highly strung.

“…More and more, recently.” I said. The words had been quieter than I’d intended. I was in the habit of muttering things for my own benefit behind my mask.

But without it on right now, she’d heard. Her face softened sympathetically.

“It’s true then,” she said, “you were abducted.”

“ Ase Serral didn’t tell you as much?”

“He hinted, but someone in his position can’t share information recklessly.”

“My impression is that the Ase is flying blind. Even after this long he’s still mostly in the dark about how I got here. Still, so am I, so I can relate at least.” I said.

“How long has it been?”

I checked my psionic clock. It had started as a stopwatch, and the core of that function remained even after I’d modified it for different needs. But I had a section of it cordoned off, steadily counting up for as long as I was alive.

“Four-thousand hours, more or less.” I said.

Byr paused her work for a moment, shocked. “That’s…”

“Too long,” I said. And it was going to keep getting longer.

She nodded in agreement, “but also very little: you speak Starspeak very well for someone so new to it.”

“Well, I’ve had some shortcuts. Plus I haven’t been able to do much else.”

Byr stretched a line of string behind my shoulders to check one more measurement, before letting me know she was done.

“Let me tabulate this, and I’ll make the last adjustments,” she said. There was a large cushy chair she indicated me to sit in while she tapped at a comically large computer next to her desk.

“Why do you need to bother with a computer? Aren’t you doing the modifications yourself?”

“I will be, but you’re still going to leave here with a copy of the designs."

“I don’t understand, a copy?”

“In case you ever need to make more,” Byr clarified. “I wrote up my measurements of the fit, and clothes wear . They don’t last forever. If you ever need more, all anyone has to do is follow the instructions…on this.”

The Farnata tapped a thick button on the computer and a block the size of a Gameboy popped out like from a toaster. Byr took the drive and put a plastic cap over the end that slotted into the machine and handed it to me.

“Thanks, hopefully I won’t need to replace anything soon though.”

Byr nodded, “Here are the shoes, two pairs just for safety. They’ll be the trickiest, so let’s hope I got this right.”

She grabbed a plastic shoebox off the workshop table and pulled out a pair of black running shoes with red trim. The sharp tread on the bottom for grip, the geometric red lines on the seams, these shoes were trying way too hard to be cool. They looked like they would appear in a super flashy commercial aimed at someone only a few years younger than me. But since Byr had no idea what human ‘cool’ was…

They circled all the way back around into real ‘cool’. What clinched it for me was the complete lack of logo. This was truly custom work.

“[Awesome, ]” I breathed.

“Try the fit,” Byr said.

“Socks?” I asked. I had come wearing a pair, but Byr had seen the holes in them when it had come time to take the measurements and immediately thrown them away.

Byr gave an embarrassed grunt, and dug into another crate and pulled out a pair of smooth gray socks.

I pulled the footwear on, and it was a snug fit.

“[Oh wow,]” I said, “ Yoe , these are comfortable.

“Please tell me they’re just barely, barely, barely too tight,” Byr said.

“Actually yeah,” I said, “how’d you…because they’re supposed to be. They’ll stretch a bit as I wear them more.”

The tailor nodded, “All right, give me just a few minutes and I’ll modify an outfit for you to wear today. We can alter the rest of the order tomorrow and deliver it to Pek Nantra.”

“I’m patient,” I said simply.

“After learning Starspeak from Casti? I have no doubt you are.”

I watched the tailor start making careful adjustments to the garments she’d already made. She pulled a few stitches out, made a tiny adjustment to the angle, and sewed them back before cutting off the new excess.

It seemed like talking would distract her, and I knew there was a little bit of a time limit. But watching aliens do mundane tasks had become something of an occasional hobby of mine. It wasn’t often that I had time to watch the Casti on base just work , but when it did happen, it was interesting to watch.

I couldn’t help but imagine a human doing the same things and then I started noticing the smallest differences and similarities. Like, how with four fingers instead of five, Byr’s grip was slightly different on the fabric as she fed it into the machine. Or how when Nemuleki had been loading crates into the car, she hadn't carried any of them with just one hand, even the empty ones that couldn't weigh anything at all.

But just like on base, there was always something to interrupt me. And Byr worked fast enough to be her own interruption. Soon, she was done. She handed me the proto-outfit that all the rest would mimic.

“You can use that room to change,” Byr said, nodding toward another door attached to her workshop.

“Ugh, thank you! ” I said, “Every time I’ve asked for privacy with the Casti they look at me like I’m crazy.”

Byr smiled, “We all come from different worlds. Nakedness just wasn’t a big concern on theirs. I’m sure some human thing you do has, or will, strike them the same way.”

It was bizarrely easy talking with the alien. Maybe it was because I probably wouldn’t see her again. Potentially ever .

Still, after putting on my new clothes, I wanted to try and keep in touch.

I came out of the dressing room and looked at myself in the same mirror she’d had me stand before to measure me. I felt like I looked good.

The outfit wasn’t fancy. Strictly speaking, it was multi-purpose and utilitarian, but somehow between the preferences I’d shared with Tasser and Dyn, and her own expert decisions, Byr had put me in something reminiscent of formal wear.

Long dark pants with a long-sleeved pale grey button-up. It was the cuffs, joints, and collar that made the outfit look the perfect bit alien. The cuffs were flexible instead of stiff, and they could be unbuttoned to let air through the sleeves. The elbows had almost invisible pads sewn under the fabric, and the pants’ knees were similar. The collar didn’t have a split at the front, but rather it wrapped around my neck with a clasp like a turtleneck, but it was still comfortable clasped or not.

“No [belt]?” I asked.

“I don’t know what a [belt] is.”

“Um…flat strip of something, you loop it through pants, and it helps hold them up.”

“Ah, I know what you mean. I’m sorry about it, but I didn’t have the machinery to do those loops on the pants. You’re stuck with straps.”

She handed me a set of suspenders and at first I wasn’t thrilled, but when she showed me how to wear them so they wouldn’t slip off my shoulders, I was actually ecstatic with the look.

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“It’s perfect,” I told her.

“Don’t say that yet,” she chided. “Move around a bit, take a few steps. Pay some attention to what fits.”

I did, and it all did.

“This is fantastic,” I said, practically bubbling. I’d known I was going to enjoy this, but not this much. I’d never really thought of myself as overly concerned with what I wore. A few months in rags had changed my tune though.

It was a little overwhelming.

“Why did you agree to all this? To help me?” I asked, stunned.

Byr gave a shrug, but it was all in her hands. “ Ase Serralinitus reached out to me a few years ago for help dressing his soldiers, and he’s been a good person to me and my Farnata. So to answer your question, it’s because he asked.”

“Well, thank you. It feels good to be taking care of myself again.” My new threads were nice and warm. It made it a bit easier when I went to pull the air mask over my mouth and nose again.

Byr might have been the oldest alien I’d met, but she was also sharp as a tack. She didn’t miss my grimace.

“Not fond of the masks?” she asked.

“Oh, I love it,” I said sincerely, “anything that lets me not suffocate is worth keeping.”

“But that doesn’t mean it’s always comfortable,” she retorted.

“It’s tight. It has to be or else the air seal isn’t good and it’s worthless.”

“True. I always hated the feeling of something being pressed into my face like that. It’s why I have the air field.”

“Is that the humming sound at the doors and windows?”

Byr nodded, “It’s the same technology in the masks, just on a larger scale. It’s a box in my…actually, one moment.”

The tailor ducked into a room attached to her workshop and noisily rummaged for a minute before reappearing carrying a blue metal cylinder. For a second my brain failed to remember what planet I was on, and I thought she’d grabbed a tub of ice cream because of the size and shape.

“This is my old one actually,” she said. “It’s broken, but I guarantee someone at that power plant can fix it. But it acts just like the mask, but in a regular geometric area. Small ones like these can’t do any custom layouts like the one I’ve got now, but it should still be able to make a bubble that you can breathe normally inside.”

“I’d love to not need the mask everywhere,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Well, it takes a few minutes to adjust the space, and the bubble falls apart if you move the machine. So you can’t really move it around.”

“Oh, well even so, it should at least let me sleep without this thing hugging my face.”

Byr winced at the thought, “Oh yes. Sleeping with one of those is awful.”

I held the device in my hand, “Really. Thank you,” I said. “I…I can’t repay you.”

She let mock surprise wash over her face, “What? The stranded alien has nothing to pay with? I’m shocked, just shocked! These are the manners your—”

A knock at the door interrupted her joke, and both Nai and Nemuleki entered.

“We just heard, they have the delivery, and it will be here in ten minutes,” Nai said to Byr before turning to me, “if you’re done, pick where you’re hiding out: up here or in the car?”

“Hiding out?” I asked.

“It’s dangerous for you to be seen; that’s not limited to wearing a poncho while you come in from the car.”

Nemuleki frowned, “Does he really need to stay out of sight? Even if someone did tip off the Vorak he was here, we could be gone hours before they show up.”

“[Yeah], I’m not even the only one here that might draw some Rak attention, Torabin .”

“The difference is, I’m going to be one Farnata of dozens blending in at a meeting no Vorak could go anywhere near without causing an interstellar diplomatic disaster. Outsiders don’t get invited to these things often, so if a human shows up to one, it’s not staying a secret!”

“I’m not Farnata either, Nai,” Nemuleki began. Except I raised a hand to stop her.

“…No, Nai’s right,” I realized what the real concern was. “She’s not trying to look out for me. It’s her.” I nodded to Byr, “the Vorak don’t know you’re helping us. But they do know about me. If I get seen here…”

“Then the Vorak learn about your connection to the Naxoi ,” Nemuleki said, turning to Byr. “I am so sorry. You invited me here and I almost just ruined your cover.”

“Don’t fret, child. I was going to say something if Calab hadn’t.”

“Make the call, human,” Nai said, “it’s going to be a few hours. Where are you hiding out?”

“Up here,” I said. “If that’s okay with—”

“It is,” Byr said.

“Then just give me something to read, and I can sit tight until the party wraps up.”

·····

Nai hadn’t liked that I called it a party, but honestly what else could it be?

It was every Farnata within a hundred miles of the factory all showing up at the same spot and exchanging stuff.

The lack of music didn’t mean anything. Parties didn’t have to have music.

Still, it wasn’t the high energy affair I thought it was going to be.

Byr’s home was attached to the small textile factory, and the first floor was reserved for today’s little town hall. I had some sense of what was going on below. I’d stolen a few careful glances out the windows at the groups of Farnata that were attending. I hadn’t been paying much attention to my radar after casting it over the building and finding that Byr was not Adept. I’d worked my psionics quite a bit on the ride here, so even when I noticed a few Adepts drifting in, I didn’t leap at the opportunity.

It wasn’t until I noticed myself paying attention to the incense decorations in Byr’s workshop that I realized how bored I was.

When was the last time I was bored? Honestly, it was…the days I’d been held by the Vorak. Ever since, I’d either been in danger, or problem solving Tasser’s curious approach to education. But I didn’t really have anything to learn about right now, even the books on Byr’s shelves weren’t too appealing. I picked one about ‘backscatter signals’ because the title reminded me of how I imagined my psionic radar worked.

The physics were a bit too far past my skill level, but since I found myself paying attention anyway, there was only one conclusion. I really was bored to tears.

Psionically, this should have been the most interesting event to happen to me in weeks, but the truth was, even with close to a dozen Adepts and showing up on my radar, it just wasn’t interesting. There were too many minds all in one place for the general-purpose mind radar to detect individuals. It was just one buzzing mass on the floor below me.

So I’d swapped filters to the shorter-range Adept detector and was trying to modulate the shape of it to track all the Adepts present at once.

Dyn barged in without knocking, nearly giving me a heart attack. I scrambled to try and hide before I noticed it was him.

He gave me a bemused look when he saw how I’d tumbled off the couch in surprise.

“I thought you’d sense me coming,” he said.

“I’m filtering for Adepts right now,” I defended. “Just checking in on me?”

“Yes. I’ve been to more than a few of these, so I decided to show you what we came for.”

“I’m wearing what I came for,” I said. I had to reclaim dignity somehow in this conversation.

“Don’t speak too quickly,” Dyn said. “Look.”

He hefted a case with rows of cells like a tackle box. Each one was filled with square paper ampules of different colors.

“You’ve stepped away from what I can only hope is the Farnata event of the season. You really want to bury the lead?”

“What do you mean, ‘bury’?”

Huh. I really thought I’d found a good way to phrase that idiom.

“Don’t worry about it,” I told him. “What’s our timetable looking like?”

“Well people are steadily leaving. Things were winding down, so I wanted to get your attention and make an appointment.”

“Well, [doc], hit me.”

“That’s not my name,” Dyn frowned.

“It’s short for…well it’s short for [doctor] in English. But [doctor] mostly means physician. Medic.”

He nodded patiently, “Still, I wouldn’t recommend trying nicknames with Farnata. We’re touchy about names.”

“Understood,” I said. “We did the regular battery of tests last week, what are you wanting me for?”

“Well, Byr told me how she put instructions to make more of your new clothes on a drive. I think it would be a good idea to do the same with your food rations.”

“That’s actually a really good idea.” It was the kind of thing that could save my life in case I somehow got separated from the Naxoi. As it stood, if I were on my own like I had started on Korbanok, I would be dead. "Could we figure out something so what I'm eating doesn't taste so bad?"

"I doubt it," Dyn said frankly. "Unless we find some actual food for you, you're stuck with those synthesized rations."

"It sounds like you've eaten them a lot."

"Not those ones specifically, but I'm in a military, Caleb: of course I've eaten rations. They all taste awful."

"What are the odds my biology will let me eat any alien food?"

"Astronomically low," Dyn said, "your body would need to be able to break down the molecules in the food into whatever molecule your body uses for energy."

"Wait, you don't know what my body needs to live?" I asked bewildered.

"Nope, I just analyzed the composition of the rations you came with and made more. It took a ton of trial and error too."

"I keep letting myself forget that you're more of a medic than a biology expert. You're not [Bones], you're [Book] or [Hawkeye]."

"You know I don't know what those are."

"They're people from stories back home. Physicians of different kinds."

"Should I be offended by any of the comparisons?"

"Oh no, they're all [awesome]."

Dyn glared at me. He knew I was using more English to mess with him.

"Are you going to keep doing that?"

"Until you uncover the lead, then yes. Just tell me what's the case you're so excited about; don't make me chase after the answer if you want me to know."

"Oh. That's what you meant by bury? 'Hide' would be a better word. But the case has the kinds of complex biological molecules we want to start really experimenting with how we synthesize your food."

"Oh really? I thought the food stuff we were picking up was for you and Nai."

"Most of it is. But even if aliens all eat different food, it's the same basic elements. Carbon, oxygen, protons. With these samples, we can catalyze new molecules and compare them to what's in your body. I want to try and put as much information about 'you' on that drive you have as possible. It might save your life."

“Yeah, I’ll talk to Tasser when we get back about what else to put on there.”

Dyn nodded, “He said you were beginning special topics soon, if nothing else we could see how well you understand biological chemistry.”

“We’ve chewed through all the simple stuff; I think I’ve basically caught up to where I was before I was abducted.” I said.

“Well, I wanted to sit down with you and plan out when I have you in medical, because I’m going to be very busy starting sometime in the next few weeks. So scheduling will only get tighter.”

“What changes in the next few weeks?”

“Winter will start to break, and when things warm up, Casti get sick. It’s so consistent, that you can do what I’m trying and plan around it.”

“Nai mentioned something like that,” I remembered.

“Point is, I’m going to be busy, so don’t anticipate having much access to me while things thaw.”

“This might be a self-centered, but don’t you have medics that can help you keep up?”

“No,” he said plainly. “The whole advantage of having a Farnata medical officer is that I can’t catch the same germs that Casti are vulnerable to. I’m not at risk treating them.”

“What about me?”

“Come again?”

“Well, if you’re understaffed, and Casti viruses won’t affect me for the same reason, couldn’t I help out?” I asked.

“Huh.”