Chapter 16
T’raat
When Leigh and I emerged from the room for guests, we were met with strange glances from the gathered humans. Agent Timber had a sideways grin on her face, Director Ann rolled her eyes, and the two former police officers chuckled and offered me their hands for a postcoital custom they dubbed “high five.”
Leigh’s pale skin, which held a healthy pink glow after our sex, blushed even brighter at all this. She ducked her head and hid behind me. “You’re not mad, are you, Aunt Ann?”
Director Ann sighed. “No, not mad. A bit perturbed that I was in the same house when my niece lost her virginity to an alien man, but not mad.” The director’s mouth turned up in a grin matching Agent Timber’s. “And bravo to both of you. Timber here informs us that T’raat broke N’kal’s stamina record.”
John coughed. “As long as he didn’t break the bed frame, we’re good.”
I straightened my stance and squared my shoulders. “I have not damaged anything during our mati—our sex. Your furniture remains intact.”
“T’raat, baby, he wasn’t challenging you.” Leigh rested a slender hand on my arm. “He was just kidding.”
I relaxed and inclined my head towards John. “Apologies.”
“Nothing to apologize for, sir. We speak two different languages, and the fact that we can use your tech to meet in the middle is nothing short of amazing. Humans struggle with automatic translations as well, so we understand a little … misunderstanding every now and then.” He extended his hand again, this time in a manner I associated with human greetings. “No hard feelings?”
John’s words brought a smile to my face. So often my words get taken in a manner I did not intend, even on Xalan. It was nice to meet another understanding human. Along with Leigh and Agent Timber and Director Ann, it helped me to believe that I might survive a lifetime on this planet after all.
Marcus clamped a hand on my shoulder. “Well, after the, erm, morning you two had, you’d probably like something to eat. Let’s move this to the kitchen. We have plenty of sandwich makings for everyone.”
Leigh and I followed the rest of the group through the house to the cooking room. Given that Timber and Ann knew where to find it with ease and even led the crowd, I assumed that they’d already been fed while Leigh and I had bonded.
The kitchen was decorated much like the rest of the house, with a strange, humpbacked figure a common motif. I pointed to one of them and queried Marcus about it.
“That? That’s a kokopelli. It’s a depiction of a native fertility god.”
Leigh grabbed my shoulders and steered me to the table, which was absent of these depictions. “No fertility gods for you, mister. At least not for a while, okay? We discussed this.”
We did not, in fact, discuss fertility gods, but I did not press the matter.
John and Marcus opened the food box and took out an assortment of packages, laying them all out on the countertop next to an elongated bag containing a spongy, fibrous substance which had been sliced in even increments across its length.
I watched with fascination as they constructed the sandwiches. First, they laid two slices of the sponge side by side on a plate. Then they queried Leigh and myself on our preferred con-di-ments. Leigh answered for us both, opting for two substances, white and yellow. John spread the substances across one surface of each piece of sponge before asking next what protein we would prefer. Leigh’s selection, turkey, looked nothing like the image from my nanites. The fat, grotesque fowl had plenty of meat on it, though, so perhaps it was butchered much like Harrison butchered his cattle.
Tomatoes, lettuce, cheese … I only knew a few of these things, but I trusted my mate to make a good selection. When she finished choosing our ingredients, which had all been piled neatly atop one slice of sponge, John placed the second sponge condiment-down on the pinnacle of the stack.
I waited for the stove to be activated, or perhaps the oven, but neither was used.
Marcus carried our plates to us and set them on the table. I watched as Leigh picked the sand-wich up and took a bite.
“We are not to cook these?” I asked.
Leigh shook her head as she chewed. She covered her mouth with one hand and pointed to my food with the other. “It’s safe, baby. Everything that needs it has already been cooked. The bread and meat are fine, and the veggies are safe to eat raw.”
“And there is none of the forbidden cane sugar in this, correct?”
Timber, who had been taking a sip of a pungent beverage at that moment, spat out her drink at my mention of the sugar. “Leigh, please tell me you haven’t fed him sugar.”
“No, Timber. What does it do to Xalanites, anyway?”
Timber coughed as her face turned red. “Let’s just say that you don’t want to feed him any of that stuff unless you have a zi’in on hand.”
What food could possibly require the presence of a zi’in ? The notion intrigued me.
Since neither Timber nor Ann would elaborate, I abandoned my curiosity in favor of the food in front of me. I followed Leigh’s lead and lifted the pile of ingredients to my mouth.
By the Xalanite gods! My eyebrows shot up as a cascade of flavors assaulted my tongue. Somehow, despite having a multitude of different food groups, everything worked well together. The harmony in the flavors surprised me, and I did not speak again until I had finished devouring the handheld meal.
“That was excellent!” I exclaimed. “My compliments, John.”
John accepted the praise with a laugh. “It’s just a sandwich, but thanks all the same.”
“Okay, that’s enough for today’s episode of ‘Xalanites Who Are Amazed by Earth Mundanities.’ We have bigger issues to talk about.”
Director Ann’s tone was grave. I wiped condiment from my mouth with a napkin as she began.
“As we suspected, we’ve all been labeled as turncoats by the media and whoever is heading the AARO in my stead. There’s not a single news outlet that’s painted us in a beneficial light, and even the president is calling for our heads on a platter.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “T’raat, ignore half of that. I don’t mean it literally. Lots of human phrasing in there.”
I nodded my understanding. “You have not rotated your outer garments, humans cannot paint with light, and we are not to be beheaded.”
“That’s … actually correct. Well, I’m not one hundred percent on the beheading. We might just be in that much trouble. The charges against us are not light, and though the United States doesn’t do beheadings as a sentence anymore, I wouldn’t put it past someone to accidentally do away with our heads in the process of apprehending us.”
I pause to consider her intonation. “You are being sarcastic.”
“Precisely. If we end up dead as a result of this, I doubt it will be by accident.”
Leigh’s healthy blush faded over the course of the conversation, and her skin took on a greyish tone. She paused with her food halfway to her mouth. “Y-you really think they’ll kill us over this?”
“It’s possible that they’ll try, sweetie.”
My mate set down her unfinished sandwich.
“Leigh? Are you no longer hungry?” I grew concerned. She had just expended many calories over the course of several hours; she needed to replenish.
“Nah. Kinda lost my appetite.”
I slammed my fist on the table. “Director Ann, these rodents must be stopped!”
Blank stares met me across the room. “Rodents?”
“The moles. The ones who turned on us.” I jabbed a finger into my opposite palm while I struggled to make myself understood. “There were four men with you when you came to the farm for me. Four rodents. We must find these men and confront them.”
Agent Timber answered first. “T’raat, it’s not that simple. We don’t know if all four agents were dirty, or if it was just one or two of them. We don’t even know if it was any of them. It could have been someone else at the AARO who set us all up. Those four men might have been killed and replaced by rogue agents when we were still on the road. We can’t vilify those men when we’re not even sure of their guilt.”
I scowled, crossing my arms over my chest. “I do not like that. If we do not know that the men accompanying you were the guilty parties, how can we possibly know who we can trust?”
“We can’t.” The director sighed. “T’raat, right now as far as the rest of the world is concerned, we are the guilty parties. Whoever set us up concocted plenty of stories to keep the media and other authorities at our heels for a while. It’ll take us months to clear this up and clear our names, and that’s only if we can locate and apprehend the moles.”
Timber nodded. “Right. Unless we can prove our innocence and prove the guilt of whoever set us up, we’re stuck.”
Leigh wrapped her hands around her glass of water and turned the cup in circles, staring at the liquid. “You said the men who arrived on the farm with you might have been killed,” she said quietly. “Why do you think this? Weren’t they the ones who blabbed to the news?”
Ann shook her head. “No. Or at least, not that we can prove. Reports indicate that the four agents who came to the farm with Timber and me are all missing and presumed dead—by our hands, I might add. Now, they could be dead, and that would be a tragedy, but they also could be hiding out and spreading news of their deaths to make our situation worse. We just don’t have enough information yet.”
A low, rumbling growl began in my throat. I did not like this. There was no clear plan of action.
“If we had my ship, we could flee to safety until this is resolved,” I grumbled.
“T’raat, your ship has long since been confiscated. There’s no way we can get to it now.”
“But director, there are other Xalanite ships on Earth. Your intake center is full of them! Why do we not appropriate one of these?”
She shook her head. “Security is too tight. We wouldn’t get five feet onto the property before we were apprehended, and apprehension is if we’re lucky. They might order us shot on sight. The intake center simply isn’t an option.”
The room fell silent for several moments. Then …
“What if we had a ship sent straight from Xalan to us?”
Everyone turned to look at Agent Timber, and Director Ann’s lips spread in a wicked grin.