And the Angels Sing

And the Angels Sing

By Kate Wilhelm

He thought of victims of hypothermia; the first step, he had read, was to get their temperature back up to normal, any way possible. Hot water bottle? He didn’t own one. Hot bath? He stood over the girl and shook his head slightly. Water might be toxic to her. And that was the problem; she was an alien with unknown needs, unknown dangers. And she was freezing.

With reluctance he touched her arm, still cold in spite of all the covering over her. Like a hothouse plant, he thought then, brought into a frigid climate, destined to die of cold. Moving slowly, with even greater reluctance than before, he began to pull off his trousers, his shirt, and when he was down to undershirt and shorts, he gently shifted the sleeping girl and lay down beside her, drew her to the warmth of his body.

The house temperature by then was close to eighty-five, much too warm for a man with all the fat that Eddie had on his body; she felt good next to him, cooling, even soothing. For a time she made no response to his presence, but gradually her shivering lessened, and she seemed to change subtly, lose her rigidity; her legs curved to make contact with her legs, her torso shifted, relaxed, flowed into the shape of his body’ one of her arms moved over his chest, her hand at his shoulder, her other arm bent and fitted itself against him. Her cool cheek pressed against the pillows of flesh over his ribs. Carefully he wrapped his arms about her and drew her closer. 

And the Angels sing. Illustration: Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

He dozed, came awake with a start, dozed again. At nine he woke up completely and began to disengage himself. She made a soft sound, like a child in protest, and he stroked her arm and whispered nonsense. At last he was untangled from her arms and legs and stood up and pulled on his clothes again. The next time he looked at the girl, her eyes were open, and he felt entranced momentarily. Large, round, golden eyes, like pools of molten gold, unblinking, inhuman. He took a step away from her.

“Can you talk?”

There was no response. Her eyes closed again and she drew the covers high up onto her face, buried her head in them.

(Excerpt from The Year’s Best Science Fiction, eighth annual collection, edited by Gardner Dozois, 2008)