Chapter 6 #2
But there’s nothing there. I step carefully around the edges of the crumbling wall and when I find it…
I tip my gun down immediately as the dark green creature looks at me with enormous purple eyes. Risk would know what jewel they remind me of.
Sisan pum pum?
Kilo’s zurgle thinks of us as Sisans. I’d thought it was a misunderstanding of Sian, but this one…
Wild zurgles aren’t rare. They just don’t tend to go near Ilidi City, so I haven’t seen one before. But I know it’s not tame. It’s too big for that. Its hair is too long and coarse. Its teeth and claws too sharp.
Sisan yum pum pum?
Each pum coincides with a soft purring sound.
It licks its lips, and I watch it stalk forward. Curious eyes locked on me.
“I’m not food,” I tell it, and it straightens.
More purring, more pumming. Its ears twitch, back and forth like a scanner searching for signal, and then it turns to look straight up. Hunched, it searches the sky and then bolts into one of the buildings, and it’s my turn to look up. The drone is overhead.
I flick on the comm. “All I’ve found so far was a wild zurgle and a lot of empty buildings.”
“Yeah, I’m not seeing much from up here.”
“I don’t know why they left, but they didn’t do it in a hurry.”
“Riann wants to point out that there aren’t any birds,” Kilo says, and then, “Well, if you didn’t want me to relay it, you shouldn’t have mentioned it while I was in the middle of this.”
“The zurgle might have gotten rid of all the birds. Or maybe they just don’t like the bugs here.”
I look in the direction of the continued pumming, but I don’t feel like going on a wild zurgle hunt right now.
“I’m heading back to you. Searching this place is going to take weeks if we try to do it on our own.” And I don’t want to be here any longer than we absolutely have to.
Scanning the roofless homes one more time, I turn to head back… but I’m not the only one whose footsteps sound softly in the silence.
I pause, looking back over my shoulder. The zurgle sits on a low wall with its poofy tail wrapped around its feet.
Pum pum. Where go? It hops down and keeps pace with me.
“I am going back where I came from.”
Back? Pum? It stalks circles around me, but doesn’t interrupt my stride. Back where?
“You don’t sound hungry…” so I can’t think of any reason it might be a threat.
The thing laughs.
And I tighten my grip on my gun once more.
“Whoa.” Kilo stops beside me. “When Bowie does that, it sounds creepy. That was downright sinister.”
I didn’t tell them to wait at the car, so I can’t exactly scold Riann and Kilo for coming to meet me.
The zurgle’s head turns sharply toward Kilo. He is owned. Pum? Where is… Bowie?
In the pums, it makes a sound that is a little too close to being Bowie’s name and Kilo takes a step back.
Kilo can hear Bowie’s thoughts, or the zurgle projects them to him, I’m not sure, but I have to hope that’s what he thinks is going on when I tell him, “Bowie is at home. Probably curled up in a plush bed or eating tinned fish.”
His tail stands straight up and the zurgle prances a little. Fish? Kissu likes fish. Kissu doesn’t remember taste. But know like.
“What is going on?”
“Yeah…?” Kilo says. “Are you having a conversation right now?”
I ignore them both.
“Did one of these Sisans belong to you?” I vaguely point at the buildings. “Do you know where they went?”
Other Sisans still here.
My skin crawls and I look around, but there is no movement. No thought.
“Where?”
Kissu paws at the ground. Down.
“Why did it stop purring?” Kilo asks through clenched teeth.
I don’t answer the question. “Do they come back?”
The zurgle looks up at the sky. Too bright. Only night.
“Thanks,” I say to it before turning to Kilo and Riann. “They’re not here.”
Wrong. Kissu makes a sneezing sound, shaking his head.
“Let’s head back so you can deal with your paperwork,” I tell Riann and then look at Kilo, “and you can feed your zurgle.”
Why lie?
They both look at me and the zurgle with appropriate confusion.
They don’t know what’s just happened, and I can’t tell them yet, but Kilo turns Riann around and pushes him back to the car.
“Yeah, sure. And on the way back you can tell us what your girlfriend is going to say about you wasting your time out here when you could be convincing her to bond to you.”
“What are you talking about?” Riann asks, looking between us with a new confusion, but I don’t rise to Kilo’s bait, and Kilo just pretends to lock his mouth and throw away the key before heading back toward the car.
The zurgle follows. And I lag, letting them get ahead of us.
Why does Sisan lie?
“I can’t say things I don’t want other Sisans to hear,” I tell Kissu, as quietly as I can.
Just because I can’t hear anyone else’s thoughts doesn’t mean they’re not listening to us from underground.
The zurgle tips its head to the side and then nods. Understand. Pum.
It purrs so loudly, even Riann turns to look behind him.
“You’re still following us,” I tell it, not sure if it will understand the implied question.
It wags its head in a semblance of agreement.
I don’t know what that means, but we get back to the car and as Kilo closes up his drone, I get in the driver’s seat, and the zurgle hops into the other front seat beside me, tail twitching as it studies the vehicle.
Pum pum how far?
I laugh, because, what am I supposed to tell it? “What measurement do you want?”
It looks up at me and I flinch back at the string of equations it thinks at me. The other information makes me pinch at the bridge of my nose. “Saints.”
“What’s wrong?” Riann pulls his gun.
“I was wrong. Kissu isn’t wild. His previous Sisan was a freight hauler… and he likes fast cars.”
Kilo takes a step closer, clutching his drone bag and looking at the zurgle, and says, “If Kissu is old enough and he’s talking to you in your head, you are taking him home.”
“He’s,” I look down at the zurgle and ask, “really?” And then I look back to Kilo. “Can Bowie get in your head?”
“Yeah. Bowie’s ninety-two. He’s the oldest zurgle I’ve ever heard of. If you can hear Kissu calling you his Sisan, he owns you. Good luck explaining that to the others.”
“Is that true?”
Kissu looks at me, purple eyes seemingly piercing through me. Yes and no. Sisan understand Kissu before choose to claim. He tips his head to the side. How?
“That is something else we can talk about later.”
RISK
Shock was called out into the Zone by Breaker about twenty minutes ago, and even though I probably shouldn’t have, I left Chrys alone.
I wanted to finish my project, and I knew I could do it if I took the extra time. And I knew that she would be okay without me.
Setting the pieces that had to be brought up separately on the floor in the hall, I go out into the room, glad to see she is cozied up by the now ever-burning fire.
Her eyes slowly trace lines on the tablet Arc got her. She’s reading.
When she smiles, I smile too.
I don’t interrupt her. Yet.
Swiping the screen, she snorts and then closes her eyes, shaking her head. “Ivy, girl. What are you doing?”
She looks up like she’s forgotten something. “Oh! You’re back.”
Dipping my head, I lean on the counter and pretend I wasn’t just watching her. “Good book?”
She uncurls herself, stretching like she’s been in that position for too long and then rolls off the couch, dancing her way to me. “It is.”
“What’s it about?”
Embarrassment flushes her cheeks and she sets the tablet down, turning it toward me. “Um… it’s about a woman whose ship crash lands on a planet and she falls in love with an alien. Basically. That is a gross oversimplification, and there are some hiccups in-between.”
“That’s embarrassing?”
“When you have to explain it to one of the aliens who rescued you from your own crash landing? Kinda.”
I look at the cover. I can’t read the title. It’s beautifully illustrated, and the alien drawn there is vaguely arachnid.
“We don’t have those here,” I tell her with a soft smile.
“I know.” She turns the tablet around, holding it tight to her chest as she laughs. “If there were Vrix on this planet, I’d have already done the marketing campaign to lure that specific demographic.”
“Will you do me a favor?”
She blinks at me and I know it was too abrupt of a subject change. “Sure.”
“Will you go read that in your bedroom for a little bit and not come out again until I get you, no matter what you hear?”
Her brows fly high, and she glances toward the front door.
“No one’s coming. I just… I’ve made something and I want to surprise you with it.”
“Okay.”
Chrys lets me cover her eyes so she doesn’t see the pieces in the hallway, and when she’s in the bedroom, she turns, pressing up and asks, “Can kiss you?”
“Any time you want.”
Her smile is bright as she pulls me down to her lips.
I savor the brief moment, replaying the sight of her on Arc’s lap, legs held wide, pussy stuffed with a cock that might someday be replaced by my own.
“I’ll be twenty… minutes,” I inform her. “Enjoy your book.”
“I’ve read it five times. I always do.”
She stays in the room as I bolt the base to the floor. She doesn’t come peeking when I use the welding pen to join the last pieces of metal, or when I drill into the ceiling to anchor the top.
She is waiting on the edge of the bed, watching the door when I come for her. “What was all that?”
“Come see.”
Her eyes widen when she steps into the living room, and for a moment, she just stares.
“Did you… build me a cat tree?”
I’ve never heard of them before, but my mutation provides an immediate mental picture. “I guess I did.”
She goes to it, immediately climbing up the bars and slipping into the cushioned basket that lets her swing above me.
Laughing, she asks, “Why?”
“Because you like to climb things… and we didn’t have anything you could before.”
“I love it.” She leans forward, reaching for me, and when her hands find my shoulders, she slides out of it, letting me catch her.