Maddy snorted. “Typical male attitude—blaming the women for their own problems. I guess men are men everywhere—even if they have four arms, scaly skin, and backwards-bending knees.” She looked at Calden. “No offense—you don’t seem to be like them at all.”
“None taken. The prevailing attitude about females is the reason I had to get special permission from FATHER in order to have you here,” he said seriously. “I had to swear that you would not be sexually compatible with myself or any of the Mentats.”
Maddy shivered. “Ugh! I can’t imagine doing that with any of those guys!”
“You would be unable to even if you tried,” Calden remarked. “Mentats keep their organs of reproduction in a pouch under their chins.”
“They do?” Thinking about it, Maddy realized that none of the strange, scaly aliens had appeared to have much of anything between their legs. She could tell because none of them were wearing clothes—well, except for a few who wore four-armed lab coats, that was. But a pouch under their chin? That went beyond weird. Then she had a sudden thought. “What about you?” she asked Calden. “Where do you keep your, uh, organs of reproduction?”
The moment she asked the question she wished she could call it back. What if the big Kindred thought she was coming onto him in some way?
But Calden answered with a straight face.
“I keep my shaft and testicles between my legs which I am assuming is where the males of your species keep theirs as well?”
“Well…yes.” Maddy cleared her throat and realized they were uncomfortably close again—probably because he was still carrying her. Still, why had she put her arms around his neck again even after the mean Mentat had left? She couldn’t help noticing that Calden smelled really good—not like he was wearing cologne though—he just had a spicy, warm scent that somehow made her want to get even closer.
Making an effort, she sat up and away from him.
“You can put me down now,” she said. “I’m not afraid and I can walk.”
“Very well.” He put her down carefully and Maddy shivered as her bare feet touched the cold metal floor. She almost asked him to pick her up again but then she reminded herself that she was an adult and needed to act like it instead of asking to be carried like a child.
“Okay,” she said, looking up at Calden. “Now where?”
“I will show you the common areas first,” he decided. “And then the storage areas and the living quarters. The station is not that large—although it is built on a bigger scale than you are probably used to.”
“It certainly is,” Maddy murmured, looking up at the ceiling which rose high above her head. But it was only about a foot from the top of Calden’s head, she saw. “It seems to be a little small for you, though,” she added as they started walking.
He shrugged. “I am used to it by now. The Mentats are smaller than my own people but our love of learning and science is the same.”
“I see.” Maddy was nearly panting—she had to trot to keep up with his long stride though she could tell that Calden was deliberately slowing his pace to try and match her much shorter one.
“Here is the canteen area,” he said, motioning to a metal panel door on the left side of the hallway. It slid open at his gesture and he nodded for Maddy to accompany him inside. “It’s all right—most of the Mentats have already had Mid-day Meal so it should be almost deserted.”
Hesitantly, Maddy followed him into a large, echoing room set with tall metal tables that reached almost to the top of her head. But there were no stools or chairs to go with them.
“I see where they eat but where do they sit?” she asked, frowning up at Calden.
“Mentats are able to settle back on their haunches in such a way that they form their own kind of chair,” he explained. “They can and do also sit on stools if they are doing work which takes a long period of time or deep concentration. But they do not consider this necessary during meal times, which are supposed to be short and perfunctory so that everyone can get back to work as soon as possible.”
“Oh, I see,” Maddy murmured. She wandered around the forest of tall silver tables, standing on tiptoes once to see over one but nothing but bare tabletops greeted her curious gaze. When she came to the end of the room, though, she saw something which was much more interesting.
Standing in the far corner of the canteen was a cluster of vast,copper caldrons—each big enough to boil an entire person in, Maddy thought uncomfortably.
She walked closer and saw that each cauldron—there were four of them—had a different colored liquid inside it. One was filled with pale yellow broth that seemed thin and boiled briskly. The one beside it was thicker—with a pea-soup-like consistency and color. Beside that was a dark blue glop that reminded her of the slime kits her nephews loved to play with. In the last cauldron was a black sludge which barely boiled at all. It reminded Maddy of lava, the way slow bubbles formed on its thick surface and then popped almost in slow motion.
The smell that arose from the four copper cauldrons was indescribable and not remotely edible—a mixture of cleaning products, rotten fish, melted plastic and burned hair. Maddy couldn’t understand why she hadn’t smelled it earlier, when they first came into the room. Then she heard the soft whirring of a fan and saw that there was a vent located directly above the bubbling witch’s brew of liquids.
“Is this what you eat around here?” she asked Calden, who had followed her and was now standing quietly at her side. “Because I’m sorry but it smells terrible.”
“I’m inclined to agree with you,” he said, giving her a little half-smile. “Which is why I brought a lifetime supply of Kindred meal cubes when I moved here to the station. This is what the Mentats use to nourish themselves, though they do occasionally eat solid foods as well. But drinking is quicker and allows them to get back to work faster.”
“Wow, you guys must all be a bunch of raging workaholics,” Maddy muttered. She loved working with animals but she couldn’t imagine gulping down her meal in liquid form so she could go rushing back to the veterinary clinic as soon as possible.
“We simply love what we do. The pursuit of knowledge is its own reward,” Calden said quietly. “Oh, excuse us, Grack-lor” he added to someone else as he pulled Maddy out of the way.
A Mentat came lumbering up with its peculiar swaying stride. It was larger than the others they’d seen—almost as tall as Calden himself and twice as massive across its burly chest. Maddy found herself leaning close to the big Kindred again instinctively. Though he was alien, he wasn’t nearly as weird as the Mentats who really gave her the creeps. With their four arms, huge, liquid-black eyes, and backwards-bending knees they resembled nothing so much as huge, mutant grasshoppers, she thought.
Calden put one long, muscular arm around her and pulled her close to his side. Maddy’s head only came up to the bottom of his ribcage and she felt a little like a toddler hiding behind its mother’s skirts. But even so, she didn’t move away—there was something about this Grack-lor Mentat that put her nerves on edge.
“Greetings, Calden,” the Mentat said in a harsh, deep voice like someone scraping a shovel over gravel. “And who is this you have with you?” He bent to peer at Madeline and she didn’t like the way his blank, black eyes narrowed as they took her in.
“This is Madeline—a female from…” Calden looked down at Maddy. “I am sorry—where did you say your home planet was again?”
“Earth,” she whispered through dry lips. She really didn’t like the way Grack-lor was looking at her. It gave her the urge to cover herself and made her wish more than ever that she had on underwear under the too-big shirt-dress she wore. “My home planet was Earth.”
“Thank you. From Earth,” Calden finished.
“A female specimen, eh?” Grack-lor ran a long, slippery tongue the color of raw liver over his thin, lipless mouth and Maddy noticed that he seemed to have a strange swelling about the same color under his narrow chin.
“
I was given special permission from FATHER.” Calden’s arm tightened around her. “With the understanding that she is not in any way sexually compatible with any of the Mentats.”
“Not sexually compatible, eh?” Grack-lor ran his long tongue over his lipless mouth again. “And how would we know that unless we try?”
As he spoke, a long, snake-like appendage suddenly dropped from the pouch under his chin. It was mottled black and maroon-red and it twitched like a blind worm, though it was considerably larger. In fact, Maddy estimated it was probably about the size of a large rattlesnake as it curled and writhed in the empty air between them.
Suddenly she remembered what Calden had said about the Mentats keeping their organ of reproduction in the pouch under their chin. Was this big asshole actually showing her his dick? Disgusting! Again she was reminded that men were men everywhere—no matter what species they were, apparently.
Calden seemed to be thinking along the same lines because he pushed Maddy half-way behind him, putting himself between her and the Mentat protectively.
“Put your tokk away, Grack-lor,” he said, his voice dropping to a warning growl. “And do not speak of hurting or violating Madeline again or I will make you sorry. Your behavior is unspeakably rude and also against the rules that FATHER has laid down for the station.”
“FATHER doesn’t know everything,” the big Mentat said. But the seeking, twitching, mottled dick-thing that Calden had called a “tokk” curled itself up and nestled into the pouch under his chin again as he spoke. He turned without another word to them and busied himself at the bubbling copper cauldrons.
There was a stack of metal cups to one side of the huge pots and Maddy watched, half fascinated, half revolted, as the Mentat quickly filled four of them—each with a different liquid. He clutched a cup in each one of his four, many-fingered hands and drank greedily, gulping from them all in turn, alternating in some pattern she couldn’t decode. He wasn’t too neat about it either—soon his scaly, gray-green chest was covered in yellow, green, blue, and black streaks and his lipless mouth was ringed in smeary colors like bizarre lipstick.
“Come,” Calden said quietly and they turned to go. Just as they got to the door, however, Grack-lor spoke again.
“Better watch out for your little female, Calden,” he rasped in his metal-scraping-against-gravel voice. “FATHER doesn’t see everything either and the fact that you have a female to breed while every other male aboard this station doesn’t, won’t go over well with my brethren.”
“Madeline is not here for breeding purposes,” Calden shot back. “She is going to teach me about her culture and the animals and plants indigenous to Earth.”
“Of course she will. And when she’s done imparting all this valuable knowledge, she’ll part her legs and her lips for your tokk and take your seed deep inside that sweet, curvy little body of hers.” Grack-lor laughed—a thick burbling that reminded Maddy of the bubbling black scum in the last copper caldron.
His words had a definite effect on Calden. For the first time she saw the big Kindred really angry. His topaz eyes glowed red and his brows drew low, his full lips narrowing to a white line.
“If you dare to speak like that about Madeline again, you’ll answer to me, Grack-lor.” His voice was a deep, menacing growl and his big hands were clenched into fists the size of her head at his sides. “This is your first and only warning. You will treat her with respect or I will teach you how to be respectful. I promise you will not find the lesson pleasant.”
Grack-lor’s black eyes narrowed and he took a step forward. Calden started to meet him but Maddy put a hand on the big Kindred’s arm.
“Come on, Calden—this is what he wants,” she murmured. She’d seen enough pissing contests between male colleagues back home to understand male posturing when she saw it. “He’s just trying to upset you. Let it go—it’s not worth it.”
Calden took a deep breath and seemed to make a visible effort to calm down which was a relief to Maddy—she’d never seen him be anything but calm and collected from the moment he’d caught her while she tried to climb out of the slime tank. Watching him go into angry, protective male-mode was alarming, especially considering how big he was.
“All right,” he said, speaking to Madeline but keeping his eyes on the belligerent Grack-lor. “Let’s continue the tour.”
They left the canteen but as they did, Maddy heard a deep, burbling laugh floating out behind them. She shivered and promised herself to keep well away from the big Mentat. He was seven miles of bad road, as her grandmother had used to say, and even with Calden to protect her, she didn’t want anything to do with the nasty alien.
Chapter Five
Calden had to take deep breaths to try and calm himself as they continued down the hallway, away from the canteen. How dare that big bastard, Grack-lor, speak so insultingly of his female? How dare he threaten and degrade Madeline? Calden himself might not know much about females—most all of the last ones of his people had died out before he himself was born. But he did know they were to be treated with respect, protected and cared for. Never hurt or threatened or insulted the way Grack-lor had done.
Mine—she’s mine. How dare he say such things to her?
It occurred to Calden that it was a strangely possessive way to feel about a specimen. He had never felt such things before—everything in the station, including whatever specimens he grew in his lab—was supposed to be communal property. The idea was that since all knowledge was valuable, every tool and asset used to acquire that knowledge should be shared by all. Calden had never had a problem with this before but now he bristled at the thought of anyone else—especially the lecherous Grack-lor—coming anywhere near Madeline.
“I should have punched him,” he muttered to himself, his hands clenching into fists at his sides involuntarily.
He had never liked the big bastard of a Mentat. Though most of the other Mentats who worked and lived at the station had gone out of their way to leave their past lives behind, Grack-lor was one who liked to tell stories of his “adventures” on his home planet before he had come here.
Most of these tales involved females he had bred—often roughly or without their consent. He seemed to think it was amusing to tell how he held females down and used his tokk on them until he filled them with his slimy, viscous seed. The thought of him trying anything like that with Madeline made Calden see red.
“Should have taught him not to speak like that,” he said, still muttering to himself.
“No, you… shouldn’t have.” Madeline’s breathless voice drew him back to himself and he saw that she was panting as she tried to keep up with his swift, angry strides. “That was exactly what he wanted,” she panted, looking up at him. “To make…make you angry. To make you…make you fight.”
Calden realized he was being inconsiderate and slowed his pace considerably.
“I’m sorry,” he said, looking down at her. “I’m afraid the two encounters you’ve had with my colleagues won’t have given you a very favorable impression of the station I call home so far.”
“Not exactly,” she admitted, catching her breath some now that she was no longer trotting awkwardly beside him. “But what can I do? I suppose…suppose I’ll have to call it home now, too. And I’ll be the last human alive.” She lifted her chin. “Unless you have my colleagues somewhere around here in slime tanks of their own.”
Calden suppressed a surge of irritation.
“I told you that isn’t so. You were the only one the recovery droids found in the wreck.” He had a sudden inspiration. “Look, what if I showed you the remains of your ship? Would that help to convince you I was telling you the truth?”
Madeline’s pale ivory skin got even paler but she nodded.
“Yes, please—show me!”
Somewhere inside Calden a little voice was whispering that this wasn’t the right thing to do—or at least that it wasn’t the right time. But he ignored it. He was still feeling irritated at th
e Mentats—Grack-lor in particular—as well as Madeline’s blind insistence that her fellow crew members must be somewhere aboard the station. Let her see for herself how impossible that was. Let her see what remained of her ship.
“This way,” he said shortly, and strode off down the corridor.
* * * * *
Madeline had to trot to keep up with him. As she ran, the way she was holding her arms curled against her chest with her limp hands dangling down made her feel absurdly like a bunny rabbit or a T-rex.
Which are both extinct creatures now, whispered a little voice in her head. Since the Scourge probably finished off the Earth after you left and now everyone aboard the Kennedy is supposedly gone. So who cares if you look like one or the other—who’s ever going to know?
But surely they couldn’t all be gone, could they? Part of her knew Calden was being honest about the fate of her crewmates and husband but another part—a larger part—couldn’t believe it was true. Maybe they were somewhere in the wreckage of the ship and she would be able to find them. Then Calden could put them in the healing slime, just as he had put her in it, and they would get better. Then somehow maybe they could continue their mission.
Awakened by the Giant: Brides of the Kindred Page 6
