Aliens Alien Harvest - By Robert Sheckley Page 0,6

we begin, there's no turning back."

"I understand," Stan said.

Julie leaned forward and took Stan's face in her cool hands. He felt something like an electric shock pass through him. Looking at her, he thought he'd never seen anyone so beautiful and so brave. Yes, and maybe a little crazy, too, but what did that matter?

"I want you to think about it, Stan," Julie said. "Give me your answer tomorrow night over dinner. If you don't want to do it, fine, no hard feelings. But if you do - listen to me carefully."

"I'm listening," Stan said. In fact, he was barely breathing.

"If you do decide to do it, then no more crap about something being difficult or you being sick or any of that. If you're going to do it, simply decide to do it, and well go on from there."

"That sounds pretty good to me," Stan said. "Julie, where'd you learn all this stuff?"

"From my teacher, Shen Hui."

"He must have been a pretty wise old egg."

"It didn't prevent him from dying," Julie said. "But while he lived, he really lived. Till tomorrow, Stan."

"Where are you going?" Stan said in alarm as she stood up.

"I'm sure you've got a spare bedroom here," Julie said. I'm going to take a shower and change, and then look over your library and lab. Then I want to get some sleep."

"Oh, fine. I was afraid you were leaving." She shook her head. "Play your cards right and I'll never leave again."
Chapter 3
Julie had always been unusual. She'd never known her parents. Her earliest memories were of an international orphanage in Shanghai. This was the place from which Shen Hui bought her, when she was still a very little girl. He had been very good to her, treating her like a favored child rather than a slave. But she was still a slave and she knew it, and it rankled. Shen Hui taught her independence of spirit as well as how to be a good thief. It was inevitable that she would try out her need for liberty on him, the one who was holding her.

She was devious about it, just as he had taught her. She put aside money from jobs she did for him. And she studied and learned so she would know all she needed when she was ready to cut loose from him. And then came the question of finding the right time. It seemed to take forever, and the right moment never seemed to come.

At last they traveled together to Europe. Shen Hui had it in mind to relieve some of the largest art galleries on the continent of some of their smaller and most prized possessions: miniature paintings, small sculpture, carved objects. They went to Zurich first.

The first night Julie excused herself in the lobby of the Grand Basle Hotel, went to the ladies' room, and never returned.

She had planned well. From the powder room, with a small fortune and a forged passport secreted on her person, she made her way to the airport, and then to Madrid, Lisbon, and London. She made the trail difficult for Shen Hui to follow. And she prepared something else.

He came after her, as she had known he would. He wasn't going to let her get away that easily. He had invested a lot of money in her, and besides, his feelings were hurt. He had thought she loved him. He had forgotten his own advice - never trust a slave. His love was replaced by hatred, all the more powerful because it was based on his own guilt and ignorance in being duped by the illusion he had created and named Julie.

They met up almost a year later. He came upon her in one of the public squares in Paris, near the Seine. Julie was wearing a black sealskin coat and a chinchilla hat.

Shen Hui noted sardonically that it hadn't taken her long to outfit herself. He added that she had been silly to expose herself to him in this way.

"What do you mean?" she'd asked.

"I mean if you had any brains, you wouldn't have let me catch up with you. Do you realize how easily I could kill you? And you could do nothing about it, not even with all the skills I taught you."

"I know that," Julie said. "And I wasn't careless. I chose to let you find me."

"What are you up to?"

"I don't choose to spend my life running," Julie said. "I am extremely grateful to you, Shen Hui. You