Have Tail, Will Travel

by Nancey Cummings

  The kits sighed dramatically before shoveling their food in their maws.

  Truthfully, he was in over his head. He knew enough to keep the kits fed and clothed—he wasn’t completely helpless—but the two created more chaos than he could manage. Just when he wrestled a bit of control over the situation, something else popped up. He needed help. Another adult. Amity had come from the home planet, Talmar, to help him get settled, leaving behind her café. He got the kits ready in the morning. She took care of them in the afternoon when they came home from school.

  Frustratingly, he felt like he and the kits would never get settled. Leaning on Amity served as a temporary stop-gap, not a long-term solution. She was a city girl, besides. Life on a sparsely populated planet, let alone in a rough mining town, did not suit her.

  Merit sent off messages to the mine and to the school while Clarity and Dare planned out their day between bites.

  “I want to take my kite out,” Clarity said.

  “I’m going to ride down to the river and look for fossils,” Dare announced, not to be outdone.

  “Can we look for interesting rocks?” Clarity asked, ears perked with interest.

  “You’re not going anywhere today. You have to sit still while I comb through your mane,” Merit said. Both groaned even though he would be the one doing all the actual work.

  He needed a partner to help share the work, someone like a mate.

  Perhaps he could hire someone for housekeeping and watching the kits while he was in the field? No. There was no one in town that he could think of suitable. He’d have to hire out from one of the distant cities. Plus, his erratic schedule meant that the person would have to live there and he could not afford that expense.

  The kits finished their meal and dashed off. Merit grabbed Dare by the collar. “We need to talk,” he grumbled.

  “Am I in trouble?” the young male asked.

  “Why did you say your sister has fleas?” Hearing the slur drop from the lips of his ten-year-old nephew disturbed him.

  “She has bugs.” Dare shrugged.

  “But fleas? That word? Do you know what it means?”

  Dare stared downward, his toes worrying the floor. His ear anxiously flicked forward. “I dunno.”

  “Has anyone said that word to you?” Merit kept his ears as neutral as possible. The idea that someone used a slur in front of Dare infuriated him but not as much as the idea that someone called the kit a fleabag. Terrans had many names for the Tal, all of them feline-centric. His people were nothing like Terran felines and to suggest they were carriers of parasites…

  His tail lashed against the legs of the chair.

  Dare’s eyes went wide. “N-no. I heard some males in town say it.”

  “Who?” Most likely, the male in question was a co-worker of Merit’s. The idea that someone could casually fling such a vile, filthy phrase at his nephew...

  “He didn’t say it to me! I just overheard him call someone a fleabag in the general store.”

  “Do not use that word. It is crude and ugly.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.” Dare’s lower lip trembled.

  Merit sighed. He could have handled that better. Anyone could have done better. “Come here.” He enfolded Dare in an embrace and rubbed the scent glands in his jawline on top of the kit’s head. Dare purred on instinct. “I’m not upset with you. Please do not use that word again. It is mean and hurtful.”

  “But Clarity does have bugs.”

  “And you probably do too. They are easily spread. Now, get your shoes on. We have to go to the pharmacy to get medicine for the bugs.”

  The day flowed from one task to another. The kits helped but aged ten and eight, their limited ability to focus required frequent direction. Amity came downstairs after breakfast and helped but muttered under her breath the entire time. He knew she did not believe he could cope with the kits, but he was named guardian, not her. He would not fail Prospect and Reason in this.

  The brothers came to Corra a decade ago, fresh from military service and looking for a place where two young males could make a future for themselves. Far from a rough and underdeveloped colony planet—as had been the original plan—Corra desperately needed population growth. Having suffered an environmental disaster two generations back, the planet was left with an invasive and aggressive species, the mornclaw, that bred rapidly and killed without discrimination. The initial infestation devastated the planet. The mindless creatures slaughtered a huge portion of the population.

  In the following decades, the mornclaws were controlled but not eradicated completely. One would occasionally wander into a secured area, especially after a big storm.

  The large population centers had since recovered, but smaller towns and homesteads vanished. Huge swaths of Corra remained uninhabited. The arable land had been abandoned simply because the mornclaws made life too dangerous.

  Not a member of the Interstellar Union, the planet sat on the far fringes of known space. Corra had resources to spare and land to give away for free, but no workers. Attracting desperately needed workers and immigrants to an empty, isolated planet remained a concern.

  That’s what brought Merit and Prosper to Corra. Merit bounced from post to post, but Prosper settled immediately to Drac, a small mining community. Merit visited frequently but finally settled in Drac a year ago. Outside the secured area, the mine and the town that supported it required around-the-clock security. Being a glorified exterminator and sometimes bodyguard proved a good opportunity for two ex-military Talmar males.

  Opportunities to court females had not proven as plentiful.

  Drac was a mining town. Everyone either worked for the mine directly, supported it with shops and cafés, or had family connected to the mine. Small but prosperous, the town offered a school, a modest medical clinic, a general store, one saloon, and two cafés, but it did not have a lot of unmated females.

  He gave a half-hearted thought of courting Serene again, for the kits. Pretty enough, she had a sharp personality and a cold demeanor. Perhaps she would be warm in bed...

  Merit rejected that idea at once. She smiled as cold as her attitude. He had tried his hand at courting her once and their personalities clashed from the start. He could not bring himself to marry her, not even for the kits’ sake. He wanted there to be some chance of affection between him and whoever he married.

  The more he turned the idea of taking a mate over in his head, he liked it more and more. A female would know what to do with the kits. She could help cook, clean, and coordinate the chaos in the house. Of course, he’d want his mate to be a mate in every sense and have her warm his bed. Winter was cold and lonely on Corra. If she were easy on the eyes would be a bonus, but he wouldn’t be too particular. He’d be happy with any female that could stomach life on a colony and could stomach him.

  How to find his mate…

  Prospect had married his sweetheart from back on Talmar and sent for her. Merit supposed he could ask his sister to introduce him to any single female friends she had, supposing any of them would be interested in a life with him in the unsecured zone on Corra. He could only assume that Amity’s friends enjoyed the luxuries and conveniences of city life back on the homeworld. He could already hear Amity scold him in that haughty tone of hers that none of her friends were interested in a primitive lifestyle with his rough self.

  Primitive. Ha.

  His house had all the basics: power, plumbing, and heat. It might not be fancy with an installed AI and bots to do all the cooking and cleaning, but it was hardly a shack.

  Besides, any female who got that worked up about not having a bot to sweep and clean the floors wasn’t the female he needed.

  He could try to court a female from one of the larger cities in the secured areas, but he couldn’t waste time traveling back and forth, not with Clarity and Dare waiting for him at home. He needed a service that would introduce him to a like-minded female.

  His co-worker and friend, Sigald, rec
ently mated, he recalled, to a strapping tall Fremmian female named Belith. Tall, leggy, and with broad shoulders, the blue female took to life in Drac with enthusiasm. Sigald used a service called Celestial Mates.

  That’s what Merit wanted, a sturdy female with long legs for chasing the kits. He didn’t care if she were Fremmian, Tal like himself, or even Corravian, so long as she could handle the primitive settlement. Given time, she might even grow to appreciate the quiet of the landscape and the close-knit community the way he did.

  He kept the kits busy with carrying baskets of laundry up and down the steps. Amity complained about the chemical smell of the treatment he applied to the furniture and bedding, but short of taking a shuttle into the cities in the secured area–an all-day trip–to shop for another treatment, there was nothing he could do about it. He half-expected her to turn up her nose and refuse to help. Much to his surprise, she pitched in and kept her criticism to herself. Mostly.

  After a long day, he fed the exhausted kits and put them to bed.

  “Is it safe for the kits to sleep on their beds tonight?” Amity asked.

  “The package claims it is safe once it dries,” he said. They treated her bed as well and she would, no doubt, worry about toxic chemicals and carcinogens.

  “Anyone can claim anything on a package. They don’t regulate things like that here,” she said with a sniff.

  “I’ll take my chances,” he said, shoving the stack of fresh bed linen into her arms. Regulated or not, he’d rather live with potential harm from the chemical down the road than live with itching, biting lice now.

  Exhausted, he collapsed face first onto the bed. He didn’t have the energy to change into his bedclothes and fell into a fitful sleep.

  The shifting bed woke him. Only one person ever crawled into bed with him.

  “Bad dreams again?” He rolled over to make room for Clarity and automatically turned on the light at the side of his bed. A soft glow illuminated the room. He draped an arm over her as she curled up into his side.

  She nodded, and her tail wrapped around his wrist, as if to hold him in place. The sensory guard hairs on his forearms stood on end while she snuggled in, only lying flat when she settled.

  “You’re getting so big,” he said. One day, she wouldn’t be his little Short Tail anymore. “Want to tell me about it?”

  She shook her head.

  “Did Dare tease you again?”

  “No. Not tonight.”

  Merit pulled the blanket over them, the scent of soap tickling his nose. Perhaps he had been a bit heavy-handed with the detergent. “Talking about it can make it less scary,” he said.

  “I was in the ground, and I couldn’t breathe,” she said, voice small.

  Her timid tone broke his heart. The kits needed stability. Not just someone to cook a balanced meal and clean, but someone to hug and hold them, to love them the way he did. He felt shame at the selfish impulse that wanted to fob off childcare to any willing female.

  “It was just a bad dream. It’s not real,” he said.

  She nodded, tail squeezing his wrist tighter. His own tail wiggled up between them and brushed her on the nose. She smiled weakly. He’d take it.

  “Is Aunt Amity going to live with us forever?”

  “Not forever,” he said. He loved his sister but living with her put family love to the test. “She’s going back to Talmar next month.” Amity talked about extending her trip and rebooking her ticket. Corra lay so far out on the rim that ships into Interstellar Union territory only launched once a week.

  “Are we going to go live with her?”

  “No, Short Tail. Your parents wanted you to stay with me, and that’s the way I intend to keep it.” Why Prospect and Reason thought he would be a better guardian than Amity, he had some idea. He had seen the kits nearly every day of their lives. They knew him. Amity had only visited once, after the birth of Dare, and had only spoken to the kits on holidays and their birthing days. Merit could give Dare and Clarity a sense of security, even if his homemaking skills left something to be desired. Their lives had been through enough upheaval. They didn’t need to go to a strange planet and leave the only home they’ve known.

  He moved to turn off the light. “Can we keep the light on?” she asked.

  “Of course,” he answered, arm falling back to the bed.

  Once Clarity’s breaths fell into the even rhythm of sleep, he pulled out his tablet. The Celestial Mates’ site promised a perfect match. He’d gladly pay the extra fees to rush his application.

  He hoped they could deliver. He and the kits needed someone.

  Chapter Two

  Kalini

  Celestial Mates took six weeks to find her a match. Part of her wondered that it happened so quickly and another, more dramatic and impatient, part of her despaired every day for six long weeks. Then, finally, one afternoon the good news arrived with a file.

  Kal stared at the message icon on her tablet. She had to be certain she wanted this. She knew her heart. If she opened it up, she’d find a reason to fall for the man inside. She always did. Falling into a haze of warm, affectionate feelings had always been easy. Falling for the right person proved more difficult.

  A perfect match.

  That was the promise. He could be anyone, from anywhere. He could be human, on Earth, perhaps even in the same metropolis as her. Or he could be an alien from a race she’d never heard of on a planet far, far away.

  Kal did know her heart. She wanted to share her life and love with someone.

  She opened the message and accompanying file.

  An impossibly handsome amber-and-honey-striped man looked back at her from her tablet screen. Not human, she recognized him as being from Talmar. As a member of the Interstellar Union, she saw plenty of Tal, Fremm, and even Gyer people every day. She studied his image, as if she could deduce what type of person he was by pixels alone. He had a shock of dark amber hair that looked like it could never be tamed, triangular ears, and his mouth had been set into a grim line.

  Not a smiler, then.

  His dark honey eyes were soft, though. Kind. Patient. The lines at the corners claimed he laughed, perhaps even smiled once, and the discoloration under the eyes pointed toward exhaustion.

  Kal had poured over the file, completely abandoning her work and tuning out the world. His name was Merit Isteimlas, a single father with two young children. That would explain the exhaustion. Did he think marrying her would get him a nanny on the cheap?

  No, she had to trust that Celestial Mates would weed that out. She had no intention of being a servant, not even a good-looking man’s servant.

  The file didn’t say if he was widowed or divorced, but she supposed it didn’t matter. He was single now and soon to be not single. They would be technically married once she signed the contract.

  Born on Talmar, he now lived on Corra, a planet outside the Interstellar Union and that she knew little about. She’d done her research on Corra, what scant information there was. The distance shocked her. Corra lay at the end of a three-month voyage. Not a trip for the faint of heart. A moment of uncertainty passed through her, as the journey was a very long way to go for a person she had never even spoken to, let alone met.

  She kept returning to his picture and his soft, kind eyes. He looked like the kind of man she could love and have a family with. She wondered about his two children and how they would react to a new woman in the house. Would she be viewed as the second-rate replacement for their mother? Or were they too young to even have memories of their mother?

  The file said he served in the Talmar military, decorated even, he owned his house, had employment, no criminal record, and was a prominent member of the community. The psychological profile indicated several points of compatibility. Her math-loving brain latched onto that. He looked great on paper, but people could lie about their history and situation. Numbers, though, they didn’t lie. The numbers said they were the perfect match and she wanted to believe that.

&nb
sp; She signed the contract.

  Just like that, she was married.

  Kal booked a ticket to Corra that day for a date five weeks out. She needed time to tie up the loose ends of her life on Earth. She gave a month’s notice to her landlord and began the process of shedding all her Earthly possessions. All her funds were transferred to an account that she could access off-planet. Corra was a long way out, but it had communications technology. When she gave notice at her job, security escorted her out as per standard operating procedure. Just like that, five little words ended her career in finance. “I got married. I’m moving.”

  ***

  Hello.

  Kal stared at the screen before deleting the one word, only to retype that exact same word. She wanted to send a brief introductory message to Merit. The extended distance made a real-time or even a recorded video message far too expensive for her purse. The data rates for text were affordable, and since it was such a long journey, they might as well chat. After all, she knew some facts about him, but she didn’t really know him.

  What to say, however, proved challenging. Favorite film? Book? Using the network, she pulled up a list of icebreakers. All of the suggested questions seemed inadequate. What breed of dog would you be? Honestly.

  I can’t think of any way for this not to be awkward, so here goes.

  I’m super excited to meet you. My name is Kalini but I go by Kal. My favorite color is yellow because it reminds me of sunshine. I live in a rainy country and never get to see much of the sun.

  The network suggests that I ask you a list of horrid questions to get to know each other. So, here goes:

  What is your favorite holiday?

  Coffee or tea?

  If you had a time machine, would you go back in time or to the future?