Erstwhile: A Sci-Fi Romance (The Jekh Saga Book 1) Page 4

  If she did.

  There was a waiting list for large items cargo transport, and she was way at the bottom. And maybe by the time she got to the top, she’d decide she didn’t want her stuff from home, but to actually go home. She needed to see if she liked the rock or the hard place better.

  Inside the bedroom, Jerry made another little woof. It was his woof of discovery, and she couldn’t imagine what he could have found.

  Pernicious carpet lint? Mouse carcass?

  She shuddered at the thought of the latter. What do Jekhan mice look like?

  She shoved off the wall she was holding up and joined him in the large, square room. “Must be a second master.”

  While she’d been supervising the deliverymen the day before, she hadn’t actually done much exploration of the downstairs. She hadn’t been curious enough, and thus hadn’t stepped anywhere beyond the door that led to the backyard.

  She stuffed her hands into her cargo pants’ pockets and studied the room from corner to corner. It had lower ceilings than the upstairs master, but was about the same size.

  “Could be a mother-in-law suite.” She scoffed at the idea. Multigenerational housing was no new concept, but she just couldn’t see having some near stranger’s parents living beneath her. She’d feel like she was being watched all the time. Judged. She wouldn’t be able to leave so much as a pair of socks on the floor without having her domesticity questioned.

  On that thought, she tapped her wristband. “Memo. Queue voice reminder for twelve-hundred hours to arrange for delivery of washer-dryer.”

  When the com beeped, she put her hand back into her pocket. Combined washer-dryer units weren’t used much on Earth because, even after so many years after their advent, they just weren’t as efficient as stand-alone machines. On Jekh, they were the norm. They took up less space in cargo ships. She’d probably have to wash all her clothes in extra-long cycles to get all the dust out. Some of the decontamination medium used in the cargo hold had seeped into her clothing crates and left sooty stains on everything near the surfaces of the boxes. Besides the clothes she was wearing at the moment, all she’d have until she could do laundry were her work uniforms.

  “You’re taking a really long time in that closet, you meatball.” She followed Jerry into the room and found him lying in the far corner beneath the high rail where things like long coats and fancy dresses could be hung.

  “You like that spot, huh? Bet that’s where you want me to put your bed.” She rocked back on her heels and assessed the little space. She didn’t see any reason why he couldn’t claim the niche.

  “I’ll need to find a saw and install a doggie portal in the basement door.”

  He thrashed his tail.

  “We cool? We all set? Let’s go. Amy’s waiting.”

  He didn’t move.

  She shrugged. “Fine. You stay. No walksies. Jerry doesn’t want walksies?”

  He crossed his front legs and rested his head atop them.

  “All right. Be back as soon as I can. I don’t imagine I’ll be gone long.”

  She left the dog to his cozy closet spot, placed a few piddle pads at the side of the stairs, and then left the basement door cracked for him.

  On her way through the living room, she tapped her wristband. “What’s the fastest way to Spilled Milk?”

  The device didn’t respond.

  Sighing, she tapped it again. “Please tell me the fastest route to the café Spilled Milk.”

  The computer within made several clicks.

  Odd.

  Those things were supposed to have the fastest processors available. The information should have been provided at a near-instant speed.

  Groaning, she tapped the band once more. “Where is the café Spilled Milk?”

  The com beeped. “That establishment is not within the Buinet Safety Zone. Travel to Zone Seven is not advised.”

  “I didn’t ask for your advice. Just tell me if I can hoof it or if I should call a car.”

  The com whirred. Clicked. “Please hold. I will connect you to the Buinet Safety Office for further—”

  “Cancel that, for fuck’s sake.”

  “Request cancelled.” The computer clicked into standby mode.

  “I’m going to have to hack the risk assessment subroutines, I guess.” Not that she was especially proficient at that, but she knew a guy on Earth who could talk her through the steps, and he just so happened to be her brother.

  In the kitchen, she rooted through the drawer she’d immediately designated as a junk catchall upon arrival and found the paper city map that had come in her relocation folder along with the usual Welcome to Our City shit.

  She spread the map open on the kitchen island, found the depot she’d started at, traced the through-traffic route Tim had taken to bring her to the house, and found her neighborhood. She held that beneath her thumb and looked for Zone Seven.

  “Three kilometers. Eh. I’ll hoof it.” Once she got there, she could ask around to find out precisely where the café was, as that zone was more or less grayed out on the map. The roads were named, but none of the landmarks—if there were any—were indicated.

  She folded the map into its original configuration, and then made one more fold to fit it into her pocket.

  “I’m leaving, Jerry.” She jangled his leash one more time for emphasis.

  He didn’t appear.

  “Suit yourself, meatball.”

  The dog needed to go on a diet. They’d fallen off their long walks in the weeks Court had been training and he’d acquired a gut. Seemed like the perfect time to rectify that. Walking him would be the perfect way to get her bearings in the neighborhood without making her neighbors suspicious about why she was always out looking.

  ___

  Trig heard the front door close, waited five minutes, and then slid the hiding space’s panel a few inches to the side so he could better hear the movements in the house.

  No sooner had he parted the panel did a wet brown nose bump his face.

  “Holy—”

  The dog squeezed itself into the gap and immediately started sniffing Murk.

  “Out. Go on.”

  The dog ignored him, but moved away from Murk’s face and toward the other end of the small space where their few items were piled. It sniffed everything it could put his nose against, and finding nothing of interest, apparently, returned to the other end. The animal settled onto his belly and let its pink tongue loll.

  “Shit.”

  The dog stretched out brazenly next to Murk. It didn’t look harmful, just a bit…daft.

  Trig reached out tentatively for the pet, hoping to move it, but the dog licked his palm as soon as it got near.

  “Ugh.”

  Then, it licked Murk’s face. Fortunately, Murk wasn’t in a state where he would have known.

  Trig drummed his fingers atop his thighs and thought. Maybe the animal would leave if he left. Maybe it’d follow him. He wound his loose hair into a quick knot, slipped on his shoes, and opened the panel wide enough for a man to fit through. He crawled out of the closet and stood.

  The dog didn’t follow.

  Trig looked into the secret compartment and found the dog lying with its snout atop Murk’s chest and its eyes closed.

  Trig blew his breath out in a sputter. “Well, if the beast is going to settle in, I’ll go see what’s new.”

  There had to be some food in the house. Trig pondered using some to lure the dog out.

  He paused at the stairs, listening for sounds of footsteps or other movement on the first floor, but there was none. He padded up carefully, stopping at the basement door to confirm what he had heard.

  Empty.

  A few canvas bags bearing the moniker of the local grocery merchant were piled on the floor near the kitchen island.

  Food.

  He started toward the pantry but stopped at the sight of empty crates and suitcases piled in front of what he knew to be the coat closet.


  She’d probably already put away her clothes.

  He moved quietly to the stairway leading up to the bedrooms, still listening, still watching.

  Convinced no one was there, he climbed the stairs and headed straight for the room he knew she’d chosen. Terrans called them “masters” for some reason he hadn’t figured out, but as the compartment was the largest of the three upstairs rooms and had its own lavatory, he found sensible that she’d choose the space for her rest times.

  At the doorway, he stood agape. The room looked as if a volcano that spewed clothing instead of molten ore had erupted. Piles and piles of clothing lined the wall beneath the large window, which he moved to quickly and pulled the curtains almost all the way closed. Kneeling in front of the pile of clothing, he picked up a shirt and found that the garment was smeared with an oily black residue.

  “Oh.”

  All dirty. Why did she bring crates of dirty clothes from Earth?

  He stood and moved to her makeshift pallet comprised of a thick comforter, a throw, and a pillow—likely filled with that synthetic fluff Terrans seemed to prefer.

  The pillow, he lifted. He brought it to his nose and took one experimental sniff. “Gods.” Just from laying her head on it one night, she’d completely imparted her essence. Or maybe she hadn’t, and he was just that far gone.

  He dropped to his knees and squeezed the pillow against his chest, burying his nose into the top.

  She smelled of sweet things—fruits he didn’t know, or perhaps some flowers that didn’t grow on Jekh. More importantly, there was the smell of woman.

  Clutching the pillow, he walked to the room’s closet and looked up at the shelf. Two more pillows. He grabbed one and placed it on her pallet to replace the one he’d taken. Then, he knelt down on the floor again beside the covers and rifled through the hodgepodge of items she’d left there.

  Some kind of heavy pendant on a gold chain.

  A thin black portfolio containing her travel credentials. There was some kind of document called a passport, and her authorization to engage in space travel.

  He studied the passport more closely. She was from a place on Earth called Boston. Her nationality was USA, which he’d heard of.

  She’d reached twenty-eight Earth years, if his math was any good. That made her younger than both him and Murk. According to Murk, a Jekhan year wasn’t substantially longer than an Earth year. Five weeks longer. Conversion considered, they each had more than five years on her.

  A settler her age should have been married already, and he found the fact she wasn’t very curious. They hadn’t started recruiting female colonists yet, except for specific jobs and wives for those early farmers. Their men didn’t think Jekh was safe for them.

  Trig scoffed.

  They didn’t think they were safe from Jekhan men. Maybe they were right.

  He studied her name. Courtney McGarry. He couldn’t remember the order of names of most settlers. Family name first or second? He knew that, like with Jekhan names, some were masculine, some were feminine, and some were both. He didn’t know the gender of either of her names, though. Didn’t know if her family and friends called her “Courtney,” or if she went by that other mouthful of letters.

  He looked at the space travel document next. That had her occupation listed as “LEO.”

  He didn’t know what that was. The letters could have formed an abbreviation he didn’t recognize. Murk might have known—could have told him if he were awake. He’d heard she was a cop. Maybe that’s another way of saying it?

  Leaving the portfolio where it’d been before, he reached for a small wad of white fabric and unfurled it. A shirt. He brought the garment to his nose, and moaned as his cock stirred. He’d have to do his best to ignore his arousal, because the pain of release wouldn’t be worth the small amount of pleasure he got from touching himself.

  Sighing, he wadded up the shirt and carried it and the pillow downstairs. In the pantry, he stood dumbly, staring at boxes and labels and making little sense of anything. Wheat flour, he understood, though wheat wasn’t a grain Jekhans could easily digest. Half the damned planet had to be covered with the stuff thanks to the farmers they’d brought in their second wave.

  He found various tins of soups that required heating and contained flavorings he was unsure of.

  He found a box marked granola, and turned the package over to read the label. Oats and fruit along with some sort of sweetener. They could probably eat that. He found a bowl in the cabinet and filled it with granola. Leaving the bowl on the counter, he opened the drawer refrigerator beside the sink. Cheese was universal. Their cow milk was very similar to the most readily available milk Jekhans had access to in the past. He took a few individually wrapped portions along with what he thought were grapes. He needed to refill the water bottle, but he could do that downstairs.

  Backing to the basement door with his loot, he took stock of the kitchen and, seeing no crumbs out of place, retreated below.

  The dog hadn’t moved an inch in the time Trig was gone, though Murk had set a hand atop the animal’s rump.

  The dog raised its head as Trig squeezed in and set his pilfered items down.

  “I hope your lady won’t mind.”

  It gave a lazy flick of its tail in response.

  Trig held up Murk’s head and pulled out the wadded jacket that had been his makeshift pillow for weeks. He replaced the garment with the real pillow and let Murk’s head down gently.

  The dog got up, and immediately relocated to the sliver of pillow beside Murk’s face. The beast sniffed it, and rested its muzzle on Murk’s shoulder.

  “I guess you know your lady’s scent.”

  No response from the dog.

  Trig grabbed their water bottle and eased back out of the compartment. At the sink, while waiting for the container to fill, he lifted his gaze to the mirror and hardly recognized the man looking back at him.

  The man in the mirror looked like a victim. Lifeless. All bone and taut skin held together by dirt because he’d been afraid to use the shower. The man in the mirror didn’t look like Murk’s pretty boy anymore. Probably hadn’t in a long time.

  Trig shut off the water after taking a sip straight from the tap.

  Probably wouldn’t be his pretty boy ever again, and it didn’t matter. Murk was too far gone to notice, anyway.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Court was in her element on the wrong side of the tracks. She understood the “bad” part of town too well, as it’d been her birthright back on Earth. People who had little to lose tended to be far easier to deal with than her well-heeled peers who liked to shake hands while holding daggers at the ready behind their backs. She understood the skepticism of the few people who dared peek out their windows at her. From the moment she’d crossed the guarded barrier between Buinet proper and Zone Seven, she’d pegged the area for what it was: a ’hood.

  A ghetto. A slum with a barrier that was penetrable only by people with the right credentials. Settlers like her could go in and go out and do their philanthropical tourism, but the Jekhans—well, there were few outs for them.

  The farther into the zone she walked, the more the scrubbed-clean facade grated at her. The place reminded her of a theme park’s main avenue. The buildings were lovely and stylized to hearken back to simpler times. The storefronts were tidy and planter boxes full of flowers. But, the people…they weren’t so bright and cheerful. The dark under-eye circles and gaunt cheeks of the few men out and about said they were tired and hungry. And they were angry. She could tell with every sideways glance at her as she passed. She couldn’t help but to stare because they were a beautiful people—the propaganda was all lies—and she didn’t blame them for being angry.

  She approached a man carrying trash to the curb, and waited for him to finish his chore. “Excuse me.”

  He started, cringed, and put his hands out as if to block a blow. Beautiful brown eyes that knew too much. Skin of the palest terra-cotta color. He wore his au
burn hair pulled up into a topknot tied with cord. She guessed he was around forty, or else a very tired thirty.

  “I’m just taking out trash,” he said. “I couldn’t wait any longer to complete the chore. My wife’s been sick.”

  His English was impeccable, but bore no accent Court had ever heard before. Perhaps that lilting slur was a trademark of his dialect of Jekhani, which she’d never heard spoken. She’d only heard recordings of high Jekhani, and she suspected the guy wouldn’t recognize that if it had bitten him in the ass.

  She kept her hands in her pockets and lowered her head a bit to make herself seem less threatening. How a man practically twice her size could find her threatening, she didn’t know, but she also didn’t know what he’d endured before she arrived. Her grandfather had always told her that too much caution was always better than too little.

  “I wasn’t aware there was a curfew for that sort of thing,” she said.

  He stared. Blinked.

  “What?” she asked. She risked a smile.

  Still, he stared.

  “Come on. Ask what’s on your mind.”

  “Fine. Are you new?” he asked in a near-whisper.

  She nodded. “Just got here yesterday.”

  He swallowed, closed his eyes, and rubbed them. “And this is your…your beat? Is that what your police call them?”

  He’d obviously made a logical assumption about her job given that the last couple of settler transports were of LEOs. “No,” she said, when he’d opened his eyes again. “I’m not on the clock right now. I don’t work until Monday. I’m just meeting a new friend.”

  He nodded solemnly. “I see.”

  “Can you maybe tell me how to get to Spilled Milk?”

  Now his brow furrowed. “Why there?”