Then she reached over and plucked the cigarette from between his fingers with the casual authority of someone who’d made a decision about this before climbing the stairs.
"No," she said simply.
He looked at her.
She held the cigarette away from both of them and then seemed to realize she couldn’t do anything with it since there was no ashtray present.
She held it awkwardly.
"It doesn’t affect me," he said.
"I don’t care. It’s a bad habit, and this is my house, when you are in my house, you will listen to what I say."
She finally just held it over the railing and let it drop into the garden below, looking slightly guilty about the littering.
He looked at her for a moment, and then something happened to his expression that he hadn’t entirely intended. The corners of his mouth moved.
Martha caught the almost-smile and pointed at him.
"Don’t."
"I wasn’t doing anything."
"You were about to find something funny at my expense. I can tell."
He returned his gaze to the city. "You sound certain about that."
"I’m a scientist. I observe things." She leaned against the railing beside him, looking out at the dusk.
"I want to run some tests on you tomorrow. I have a contact at Yollo who’ll be discreet. I need to understand your physiology properly before I can understand anything else."
"Alright."
She glanced at him sideways.
"Just alright? No objections? No questions about why?"
"You’re going to do it regardless of my objections," he said.
"And your reasons are obvious. You found something unprecedented, and you need data."
He paused.
"Also, you’re trying to establish a sense of normal routine with me, something structured and purposeful that moves the relationship from strange to functional."
Martha was quiet for a moment.
"That’s very perceptive," she said.
"I’ve had time to develop observational skills."
She almost said something, stopped, then chose a different direction.
"How are you finding the house?"
"Quiet," he said.
"In a good way."
He looked at the silver birch trees at the property’s edge, their leaves catching the last light.
"You built something good here."
Martha’s expression shifted into something softer and more plicated.
"Kate built it. I just live in it enthusiastically."
"That’s not what I mean."
She understood what he meant. She didn’t respond to it directly, but she understood.
They stood in fortable silence for a while, watching the city lights strengthen as the sky darkened. The kind of silence that didn’t require filling. Martha had a quality he’d noticed from the beginning—she didn’t feign fort. Either she was fortable or she wasn’t, and right now she was, standing on a balcony in the cooling evening air with someone she didn’t fully understand but had decided to trust anyway.
"Tomorrow morning," she said finally.
"Nine o’clock. I’ll drive."
"Alright."
She pushed off from the railing and turned to go back inside.
Then she paused.
"Jolthar."
He looked at her.
"Whatever you’re working through up here. Whatever it is you’re sitting with."
She held his gaze steadily.
"You don’t have to do it alone. You can talk to me, anything. That’s all I’m saying."
She went back inside.
He turned back to the city; the lights of Kharsen blazed against the dark.
He sat with her words for a long time after.
*
The medical wing that Martha’s contact worked from was separate from the main hospital—a research facility attached to Yollo’s academic division, where unusual cases were handled with the discretion that came from everyone involved being scientists first and gossips second.
Dr. Freya Nansen was sixty, sharp-eyed, and had the manner of someone who’d seen enough unusual things in forty years of medical research to have retired her capacity for surprise.
She shook Jolthar’s hand, assessed him with the prehensive efficiency of a full medical examination contained in a two-second visual scan, and said "interesting" in a tone that contained multitudes.
The tests took four hours.
Everything from standard biological panels to cellular analysis techniques that Martha had to explain to Jolthar in simplified terms because the underlying science hadn’t existed when he’d last been conscious. He submitted to all of it with patient cooperation, answering questions when asked, remaining still when stillness was required.
Martha watched the results e back on Dr. Nansen’s screens with the expression of someone whose hypothesis was being confirmed in ways that exceeded the hypothesis.
His cellular biology was human. pletely, identifiably human, with nothing exotic that conventional analysis could detect. Eighteen years old by every biological marker. Organs functioning within normal range. Blood chemistry standard.
The origin energy readings were a different matter entirely.
Dr. Nansen looked at those results for a long time without speaking.
"Martha," she said finally.
"These readings are outside the scale of my equipment’s calibration range."
"I know."
"My equipment calibrates to the Superior level as its upper bound. That’s theoretical. I’ve never actually encountered a Supreme being for parison."
"I know."
"These readings are—"
"Above that. Yes," Martha kept her voice even.
"I know, Freya."
Dr. Nansen looked at Jolthar.
Then at the readings.
Then back at Jolthar.
"Interesting," she said again, with significantly more weight than the first time.
Jolthar sat on the examination table in a hospital gown with the particular indignity that hospital gowns imposed on everyone regardless of their cosmic significance and waited for them to finish discussing him.
Dane and Sofia had e. Martha had tried to prevent it and failed—Sofia had simply appeared at the car when they were leaving and gotten in with the expression of someone prepared to sit on the roof if necessary.
Now they sat in the waiting area outside the examination room, visible through the interior window. Dane had a cup of hospital coffee that he wasn’t drinking. Sofia was watching Jolthar through the glass with the focus of someone who’d waited years for this moment and was still processing that it was real.
The doctors moved into a side consultation room to review results in detail, leaving Jolthar alone in the examination room.
Dane appeared at the door thirty seconds later.
He sat in the chair beside the examination table and looked at Jolthar with the directness of someone who’d decided that his remaining time was too limited for indirection.
"I want to ask you something," Dane said.
"Directly."
Jolthar looked at him.
"Are you the immortal lord? The one sealed in the valley three hundred years ago?"
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