“We’re all here with nothing to do for the next, oh, five hours. Maybe it’s time you let us in on what exactly were supposed to be doing.”

“We’re going to the ship so we can take you home.”

“Why? What are we supposed to do there?”

“I told you before, I don't know anything about your life before we came here. I was only given the information I needed to protect you. I wasn’t told anymore in case I had to blend with the Anasazi, they wouldn’t pick it out of my mind.”

Despite the feeling of the world falling away around him, Max found himself interested in what Nasedo had to say. “I heard about the Anasazi before. I thought they were some ancient civilization on earth. What do they have to do with anything?”

“The Anasazi are an ancient species, they have traveled all over the galaxy, conquering what worlds they could, destroying those they couldn’t. We came to this planet hoping to flee them, imagine our surprise to learn that they had been here already. When we found the signs, we waited above the planet awhile, trying to determine whether it was safe or if we should move on. But we found that they were gone. They had visited the primitive beings here then lost interest in this backwater little planet long ago. Only their name lived on, left behind in the language of those they had lived with.”

“If this planet is so terrible why did you come here?”

“A mistake, really. The scientists who made me searched the skies looking for a planet that had a civilization that would be able to help us. They picked up the signature of nuclear manipulation here and assumed it to be a sign of an advanced culture. Instead we found a society in it’s infancy. Humans are unusually precocious, always dabbling into things their not ready for.”

“But I can’t say it didn’t serve it’s purpose. I told you that the Anasazi would be able to find you by reading the disturbance in the electromagnetic spectrum that your thoughts create. The nice thing about all that atomic experimenting that humans did was that it disrupted the earth’s electromagnetic field, making it a perfect shield of your presence. So we decided to make the planet’s youth work for us and planned to put down where the disturbance was the strongest, but we didn’t anticipate the effect it would have on our navigational instruments. Instead of landing inconspicuously, we crashed down, a hundred miles off course.”

“Our ship was ruined and half of our party was dead. We hid what we could in some nearby caves and returned to our ship, hoping to find something salvageable in the wreckage. But the response to our coming was quick, and before we knew it we were captured.”

“Luckily, I was able to escape, and I drifted for a while, trying to find my way back to the crash site. I collected DNA from suitable hosts as I went, and when I returned to the caves I retrieved the essences we had brought with us and mixed the DNA with it, creating you. The book you found was my manual, and my notes so I would recognize you when I came back for you.”

“I spent the time of your gestation trying to find my companion and a way off this planet. I was unsuccessful at either and when I came to get you I found that, like all humans, you had matured too quickly, and everyone but Tess was gone.”

“I concentrated on just surviving, hoping that I would find you. Luckily the atomic shield dissipates with time and after fifty years I was finally able to pick up a faint signal and hurried to collect you. Did you think it was a coincidence that I found you right before your enemies showed up? The only reason you’ve made it this far is that I knew which planet you were on. Once you used the communicators, so did they.”

Michael sat back, thinking about the answers he had finally been given, but something Nasedo had said earlier came to his mind. “You said you had other options, what were you talking about?”

“We didn’t go into this endeavor without having a back up plan in case the engineering didn’t work or something happened to you. When I couldn’t find you, I did what I was programmed to do. I had reserved part of your essences, and I worked on seeding it into other hosts. Of course, the alien part wouldn’t be as strong as in you, but it might be enough.”

A question that had been nagging Max for a while started to work itself out in his mind. “What do you mean by “seeding”?”

“Finding human embryos and infusing them with the essence.”

“And that worked?”

“Well, there were a few mistakes at first. But I eventually worked them out.”

“And Hubble’s wife? Was she a mistake?”

Nasedo turned his cold eyes on Max. “How does that pleasant human saying go, you can’t make a cake without breaking a few eggs. It was what I had to do.”

Suddenly the information that they had been so eager for seemed like too much, and they settled back into silence.

**********

Liz combed her hair for what must have been the fortieth time. She was not going to look at the clock. It would only tell her what it had the last fifteen times, that it was after seven, it had only been two minutes from the last time she looked, and Max still wasn’t there.

She heard a sound outside the window and turned in surprise. Someone was climbing up the fire escape. It was a sound she hadn’t heard in a while. The first couple of weeks after she’d come back she and Max hadn’t been able to spend enough time together. They would call each other late at night and more often than not their conversation would end with Max climbing the ladder to her balcony. They didn’t do anything, really. Just sat talking or quietly looking at the stars, happy just to be near each other. That is until her father, battling a bout of insomnia, heard voices behind her door. He saw Max and made it clear that the only way Max would be allowed in the Parker household would be if he came in through the front door and it better be limited to a reasonable hour, dammit. So far they’d abided by the rules rather than have Max’s visits cut off completely.

But she could tell that this time it wasn’t Max. The steps were too light and they were moving too slow. Curious, she went out to look over the edge.

“Maria? What are you doing here?”

“Max isn’t coming, Liz.”

“What? Yes he is. We talked about it earlier. He’s just late.”

“Nasedo showed up at Michael’s apartment, with Max and Isabel. Their enemies were after them. They had to go.”