Chapter 4
It Is My Job to Ask Questions
Krir waited until the human fell asleep, two questions turning over in his mind.
What was he going to do about her? And…what was he going to do about the Giuk?
Enslavers roamed the galaxy, taking sentient species to work for them with no compensation and no way home. Shards of rage stabbed deep into his soul. He may not have any answers about what to do about Nicole, but there were actions he could take against the Giuk.
When she stilled and her breaths evened out, Krir snagged the rover’s key and crept out the door.
The setting sun beat down on the little vehicle, and the desert air tried its hardest to bake him to leather in the short drive to the escape pod.
He brought his tablet with him. He scanned the words on the outside panel.
Through chance or the ancestors’ intervention, the blue button had opened the pod but had not sent the usual distress signal.
Krir plugged in his tablet and accessed the onboard computer.
He was not a programmer, but every geologist sent off-world received training in a myriad of skills that might be helpful when stationed alone on a potentially hostile world.
Languages, first aid, botany, biology, and computer programming, among others.
Technology could fail easily on worlds with harsh climates like Vrul 4.
The code was typical Qilffiran. The Giuk bought most of their ships from Qilffir, so he’d been counting on this.
He found the emergency transmission code, inserted a few lines, and activated.
He may not know what to do about Nicole, and it would soon be the Qilffir External Ministry’s job to deal with the Giuk, but he transmitted a message to whatever ship had launched this pod that it was gone, destroyed in some catastrophic failure.
The Giuk would not come looking for Nicole now. He’d bought her time.
A message to the Geological Agency would take at least two days for it to arrive.
Another two days for them to send a ship for extraction.
Since Nicole seemed well overall, they’d put them low on the queue.
It would be a few more days, and then he would have less than ten days left, anyway.
He’d hate to give up these last days if it were at all avoidable.
But the Qilffir government should learn soon of what the Giuk were doing.
He’d prepare a message and discuss it with Nicole when she woke again.
She had no idea where she was, or where her planet was, or anything to do with sentient species other than her own.
A few more days would not solve any of those problems if she didn’t mind being stuck on this rock with him for a bit longer.
By the light of the first moon, Krir returned to the research station and finished his work for the day.
Instead of cooking, he broke into the emergency rations.
Not his favorite, but Nicole needed rest more than he needed a hot meal.
He gathered the extra pillow and a blanket to make a pallet under the workspace on the far side of the unit.
Not much room for privacy, but he’d do what he could to give the human space.
She’d been through a traumatic series of events, and he wanted to earn her trust, show her not all species were as cruel as the Giuk she had met.
He made himself as comfortable as he could under the desk, slowly eating the dried fruit and freeze-dried insects from the rations as he studied his guest. Who knew primates could evolve intelligence comparable to his? Well, perhaps some exobiologists, but it was well outside his area of expertise.
Her body had unusual but appealing curves. And he wanted to run his fingers through her smooth hair again. It reminded him of the down of a juvenile ryk. He’d been alone too long, attracted to a strange mammal who’d needed his help.
It had been a year since he’d shared his space with another—a prospective mating that hadn’t worked out.
Leba hadn’t taken to the idea of long field studies.
He couldn’t blame her. She was a bureaucrat, not a scientist, and had no interest in joining him for half the year on desolate planets or the far reaches of Qilffir.
He slept fitfully, every noise from Nicole hauling him from unconsciousness.
The rustle of the bedding, her breathing, the smacking of her lips.
Occasionally, Nicole would make a small sound, like the whimper of an infant.
Krir gave up a little before sunrise and slipped out to start his daily measurements.
When he returned, Nicole was sitting on the bed and looked much less the desiccated creature she’d seemed yesterday.
“Hi,” she said in a squeaky voice as he walked in. Her gaze darted around the room as if she’d forgotten yesterday altogether.
But judging from her reaction today, she remembered. She didn’t smell afraid, just…nervous, alert.
“Hi,” he said back, but found himself at a loss for what to say next. “The sun is up.”
The sun is up? That was all his years of education could contrive? Leba had been right—it wasn’t normal for a Qilffiran to be alone for so long. She’d left before his daft decision to spend half a year isolated from all people could affect her.
“Is…is that supposed to be a greeting or a warning?”
He chirruped to himself. “Both, I guess. Once the sun rises, the temperature soars on this planet. It’s mostly desert this far north, and we’re getting out of the temperate season, so going outside is difficult without proper gear, especially since you have skin, not scales.
But also, in my clan the traditional morning greeting is ‘The sun is up and waits for no one.’”
The left side of her mouth quirked up, and her brown eyes glittered in the low light of the housing unit.
“My dad used to say, ‘Make hay while the sun shines.’ Usually when he had to wake me up early on the weekends when I was a teenager.”
Krir had so many questions from her simple statement. The translator discs were truly marvels of science, but what in the names of his ancestors was hay, or weekends, or a teenager? Before he could ask, she continued.
“I’m a bit hungry, Krir. You don’t happen to have coffee, do you?”
Yet another new word he’d have to learn, this coffee, but he understood “hungry.”
“What do humans eat?” There were, of course, the standard rations, the emergency rations, and what he’d been able to forage from the desert during his stay.
“We’re omnivores and eat most plants and animals as long as they’re not poisonous. I’m not gonna eat you out of house and home, am I?”
He searched through the selection and picked out a small bag of dried fruit and nuts. He handed it to Nicole, then went for a water bottle and filled it from the tap.
“What is coffee?” He passed her the bottle.
She sipped the water and opened the bag, picking out a nut and examining it.
“It’s a beverage made from coffee beans, ground up, and steeped in water, usually hot.
The beans are a seed from some tree, but I’m not a coffee afficionado, so I buy the cheap stuff and run it through a standard coffeemaker. ”
He followed some of that. But it still didn’t tell him why she wanted it. “And you drink this as a health tonic?”
“Oh, no, it’s loaded with caffeine, so it helps wake me up.”
“A stimulant? Yes, I have stimulant powder you can add to your water if you want. But…let’s wait until you’ve healed more.”
Nicole made a face but popped the nut into her mouth and chewed.
“How is it?” Krir asked, unable to interpret all the expressions crossing her demonstrative face.
Humans seemed to have tiny expressions for almost anything that crossed their minds.
Not like the Qilffirans. Surprise, fear, and lust were the only emotions that unconsciously came through their faces, though the shifting colors of their scales sometimes gave away much, much more.
“Good. Tastes like a hazelnut. Glad I’m not allergic.”
“All-er-jic?”
“Some humans can’t eat some foods. It causes an anaphylactic reaction, closing off their airway if they don’t receive immediate treatment. I got lucky and have mild reactions to pollen and stuff. Hay fever, they sometimes call it.”
“You used that word earlier, hay. What is it? And why would it cause a fever?”
“You are a man with questions, aren’t you?”
“I am a scientist. It is my job to ask questions.” He squared his shoulders, and his face flushed.
“Good point. Okay, so hay is a type of grass we use to feed livestock, and it doesn’t really cause a fever. It was an old wives’ tale from two hundred years ago.”
“Old wives’ tale?” So many words he didn’t know. What was a wive, and why would old ones tell tales?
Nicole wiped a hand down her face. “This isn’t going to be easy, is it? Just because we can understand each other doesn’t mean we can communicate, does it?”
He chittered again. “No, I suppose it does not. I’ll let you eat while I work.”
Krir turned from her strangely compelling presence and tried to focus.
She crunched through the food he’d given her, and the metal water bottle clanked against the floor.
Her bedding rustled, and he glimpsed her stretch as she stood.
Her shirt rose, revealing the smooth skin of her belly.
Odd for a mammal to show off their soft underside to a stranger.
At least from what he remembered from the animal behavior class required before being sent off-world.
Even odder was his own response to it. A strange desire to run his hands across the exposed skin, to taste it, to… He gripped the edge of the counter and returned his attention to his microscope as she shuffled off to the toilet.
The human was the least of his concerns. The samples he’d retrieved two days ago, before Nicole landed in his life, waited for examination. He had thirteen days to finish what he’d come here to do, and he couldn’t let a soft-skinned, delectably curvy mammal distract him from his life’s purpose.
Could he?