Ch. 6: The Invitation

Alarm - no snooze. Splash water in his face, basic in-room toiletries while he waited for the shared shower to empty. Quick showers in the morning - the long ones were reserved for nighttime to scrub away the cruft of Rick biology he picked up throughout the day. Two showers were necessary because - according to the ICG - Ricks considered humans to be dirty, greasy animals (to paraphrase, anyway). Uniform up, coffee and breakfast, and Ray would be at his office in time to review the day's work queue before any all-hands meeting, if another one got called.

That was the schedule he'd fallen into already; the only variance today was that he was cleared to go maskless, though he kept one on his belt anyway, just in case. The routine was comforting, normalizing. The hypocausted tile in the bathroom was beginning to feel like a welcome luxury instead of strange. He was beginning to get to know the women he was roomed with, if by osmosis; One of them knew Rylee and that was a conversation starter; another knew Martine well, but at the moment that was a touchy point and just meant they shared a lot of 'meaningful' glances that he didn't know the meaning of.

Given how prickly he was to the idea of being a servant, he held the uniform in high regard. It was really quite comfortable and practical, and when he had a belt strapped at his waist it gathered in a way that Ray thought flattered him: naturally, he was narrow-waisted and had broad shoulders that gave him more of a reach than his height would normally allow; the uniform gave him a bit of an ass that loose jeans didn't, and the placement of the seams implied more of a full, muscled chest than he deserved. As someone who had given up on filling out, the uniform was an equaliz--

BREEP BREEP

He hadn't even gotten the magstripe up the front zipped up when the badge chirped for his attention. A low, long tone would have meant that he had new items in his work queue, but the quick chirps... Those were Vern. Probably another all-hands meeting. Sighing, Ray fitted in his earpiece and touched the badge to play his message. As soon as it started playing, addressed to Ray in particular, his thoughts shot back to the previous day and the possibility of him listening in on the conversation, on mention of him.

The term 'new assignment' put his teeth on edge, and made his stomach start doing flips. Still, he took the moment to comb his freshly-short hair neatly back, putting the little bit of a bulge into the small pompadour.

A few moments later, coffee in one hand and a nut-butter bagel in the other, still wrapped in a sleeve so he wouldn't leave a trail of crumbs. Ray rapped his knuckles on Vern's open door before entering. "Good morning, Ghara Vern. I should warn you that if you've summoned me for the recipe to sweet potato casserole, it is a closely guarded secret. I hope you enjoyed it, though."

Vern was far too courteous to scoff at the joke, but stared impassively from behind his desk as Ray entered. It would be extremely uncouth to admit to watching Quar, but it was, in fact, her reaction to the casserole that had prompted Vern himself to try it before he threw the thing out.

"Thank you, Mr. Tanner. It was interesting. Rriigkhan dishes utilize complex flavors and aromas to excite the senses, while it seems that human desserts aim chiefly to overwhelm the tongue with sweetness. Experiencing that cultural difference first-hand was quite enlightening.”

A raspy exhale turned into a laugh much like yesterday's at Vern's response, but Ray had the sense to pull his lips across his teeth and bite them together until the grin making apples of his cheeks died away. "Not everyone has a sweet tooth, I suppose. You'll have to watch out for Christmas if that one hasn't already come around to get you. It's usually five to ten pounds of enlightening."

Vern reached out to pick up a small stack of booklets printed on glossy paper which sat on his desktop, tapping them on the surface to align them. Research found that physical teaching aids were more effective; a human would glance over a pamphlet more than once when they got bored. They wouldn't open an ebook or watch a video twice. The booklets covered a variety of basic topics important for any domestic to know: Rriigkhan body language, Rriigkhan dietary needs, a brief overview of the caste system which was really more of an attempt to proselytize. See how happy everyone can be when all uncertainty is removed from life?

Another pamphlet touted the benefits of reversible self-sterilization. This was a new medical technology the Rriigkhans had been working on as soon as they arrived at Earth. Only recently had it been perfected for humans and now small clinics were springing up all over the place. The cover was illustrated in a vintage comic book style with halftone coloring, depicting a woman trying to hold three screaming babies in her arms and a man carrying heavy shopping bags filled with diapers and toys. His shoulders stooped under the weight of the bags. Both wore expressions of deep frustration, with frizzed hair and sweat on their brows.

Below the picture:

Did you know? Sterilization is completely reversible for both males and females.

Did you know? These sterilization techniques are based on the same technology Rriigkhans use for themselves. 98% of the Rriigkhan population on Earth is sterilized!

Did you know? If sterilized at an approved facility, you will receive a one-time payment of $150.

“Getting straight to the point,” Vern continued, holding out the booklets while his eyes moved disinterestedly between his own hand and Ray, “I've called you here to hand over some basic training materials. You can glance at these, but queued up on the video player in your room are a series of instructional videos. The first is related to grooming your master. Claw care, crest buffing, shedding cycles, and so on. The second is a brief overview of the Late Expansion Period, which is one of Ghara Quar's interests, as you may have noticed. Your people often erroneously refer to it as the Rriigkhan medieval era. Following that are several instructional videos on maintaining equipment for event use with historically approved methods.

“I don't expect you to watch all of these at once; it will be a few hours worth of material, and I know you have duties to attend to. You may view them at your leisure over the next day or two.”

He gazed levelly at the human, not expecting questions but keeping himself open to them.

Stepping closer to the desk, Ray released the hand that he held by his wrist to accept the pamphlets, then cycled them from the back toward the top, glancing briefly across the covers. The sterilization pamphlet, he plucked from the rest and slipped back toward Vern. "Unless you're trying to get me to reverse it, you're about fifteen years too late on this one. I guess I got a bad deal, having it done when it was only free. Part of the trials. Is there someone I can send to for the hundred-fifty now?"

The others were pressed tight between his fingers when that hand went back to his beltline and the other hooked its wrist; with his feet shoulder-width apart, it could have been a military at-ease position, but he'd learned the habit elsewhere.

"To the point, though - as you put it. Why have you given me these now? Your message this morning mentioned a new assignment. Is this ...conversational material, in case I decide to give Ghara Quar another casserole or encounter her in the grotto. If so, thank you. But if you think that I'm cut out to be clipping her nails on a more regular basis, I think you might have misread my CV. I'm certified flow maintenance. Water, HVAC, a bit of low-voltage. Surely you don't think that I have the people skills for something more... 'Master' facing." Oh, how that word burned when Vern had used it; his eyes had narrowed, but he hadn't interrupted the spiel to bristle at it. Now it came out of his mouth dripping - he would say 'Ghara' a hundred times with a smile before that would pass his lips evenly. In his hands, the pamphlets bowed, but there was too much broadleaf fiber in the paper for them to crinkle or crease - they were practically plastic.

"I'm pretty sure the contract we have stipulates that. I'm not opposed to picking up extra work as needs done; I meant it when I said it before. I'd just as soon not be idle. But she's got a few house slaves who are happy to dote on her - Mary practically swoons for her - and I will petition the ICG before I swoon. I promise you that. Why don't you give me a job digging irrigation ditches on the sunny hide of the hill or something, and I'll catch up on these before the next tournament so I don't go embarrassing her again, or whatever happened. Let me know when that's coming up, so I'll be prepared, be all caught up on this material. Was that all you needed?"

Vern's head twitched back from the caustic scent of Ray's anger, brows lifting while the rest of his face subtly slackened. He braced his palms on the edge of his desk, fingers curled over the top, and stared at Ray for a long moment before his face regained complete neutrality. His elbows had been turned out; now they slowly settled against his sides as his grip on the desk edge relaxed. Through all of this his tail had been very still, though his ears had risen and were trained stiffly on Ray.

“I was not expecting this reaction from you, Mr. Tanner,” he said slowly, inclining his head very slightly. “You act as if this is a punishment or a... a demotion. I assure you that it is neither. Ghara Quar finds your company agreeable. Apparently.” He lifted a hand, palm up and fingers flicking out in a what do I know? sort of gesture before he lowered that hand to his lap. “I cannot fathom any reason why.”

His stressing of that single word, and the way in which he scrutinized Ray from narrowing eyes very clearly – for just a moment – spoke of what Vern really thought. He might well be looking down at a particularly ugly bug scuttling over his toes.

“Ghara Quar is considering expanding your role to that of a general assistant on top of your regular duties, for which you would be paid accordingly, but even if she had not, there is no reason for you not to have these skills. They will be of value to you when situations arise in which you have need of them, as one did yesterday. If you would firmly reject such a position that is your prerogative, but the training is not negotiable.”

"I already agreed to the training," Ray pointed out, his voice level and firm, his heavy brows matching with a straight line shading over his eyes. "A little bit of reading material never hurt anyone." He could thing of three or four counterexamples before his next blink but it was hardly the time to bring that up. "Relating to the people I work with--" (Not 'serve', not even 'work for') "--is always a worthwhile goal. Enlightening, as you said." But he chewed on the desire to add that maybe it would suit Vern to do the same, if he couldn't understand how Ray would see the re-assignment; in the end, he swallowed it, unspoken, in order to avoid adding more fuel to the atmosphere in the room before a spark could light it.

“You may view brushing your master's fur to be a more humiliating task than digging a ditch, but this distinction exists entirely in your own mind.  You are not better than the people you refer to as slaves. Think about the meaning of that word, Mr. Tanner, before you toss it around. You are here by choice, as are all of your coworkers. ” His tone had hardened. The fingers still on his desktop drummed claws once across its glasslike surface as he waited for his words to sink in, gaze dropping deliberately down across Ray's compulsory uniform before reaching his face again. A pathetic Haukagh attempting to create his own little hierarchy within a hierarchy by putting down his fellow castemembers – that's what Vern saw.

"I know well the meaning of the word, Ghara Vern. I don't pretend to be better than anyone - though that is a distinction that appears to be made on other people's minds." It was like fighting gravity to throw back the caste distinction at Vern, to ask him what made him better at Ray, but it just smoldered in his eyes for a moment. "I don't find spending time with Ghara Quar to be humiliating, either, as long as we're talking about assumptions. What I can do, what I will do for a friend, and what I've chosen to be paid to do by a contractor, aren't always completely overlapping lists. My contract reflects my choice. I think you for this training material and for your insight into the situation. If there is nothing else, I'll get to my work queue, and review this in the afternoon. If there is something else more in line with my skill set that I can do to further the harmony of the dome, please be certain to let me know."

Tearing off a piece of the bagel, he chewed it angrily - and slurped at the bitter black coffee - on the way back to his little office.

It took him a few hours to realize that the reason nobody was talking to him (which just a few days ago would have been exactly what he expected from this job - solitude, being left to complete five years of tasks while the calendar ticked off the days until his contract released) was because of the glower he was wearing, not not (necessarily) because of anything that had been said between him and Vern. He made sure to spend his lunch helping Rylee with some of the replanting that was being done around the front of the house - little alien succulents with sprays of tiny nodules that would swell as they sucked nutrients from the soil and firm up into a sort of multi-hughed hexogonal cone sort of thing, apparently, with hints of broccoli thrown in? He couldn't picture it, but after his comment to Vern, doing a bit of digging - even with a small trowel - felt appropriate. Without the mask, even with the stinging in the corner of his eyes and the bite in his knees, working outside was a small luxury.

It was roughly that time that an invitation arrived for Quar. This one came not over the network mesh or even drone, but delivered by a young male Rriigkhan, tawny-furred with a cream star on his chest and golden-brown stripes racing down his back toward a wide tail, barely of adult age. He arrived in his own pod - a little one-person racer with distinctive yellow, green, and black stripes chasing around the shape of the big windscreen at front. After circling the dome while waiting for directions on where to land, he touched down lightly and lifted the windscreen to hop out full of light and energy, ears erect, tail swishing happily, mouth open and tongue panting to fill nose and mouth both with the smell of the dome. His crest had already been subjected to acid etching, a sort of semipermanent body art that was making a comeback in the Rriigkhan colonies.

The young male teased at a package he drew out of hard-sided sling bag in the same yellow, green and black. The package was wrapped in an old narn leaf and tied with twine; the leaf, when unwrapped, would probably be big enough to use as a beach towel. "I can only give this to Ghara Quar Delvan Nrahu; no intermediaries." The male's colors, the narn leaf, the mystery he was trying to drum up around this invite could only point to one thing: Quar had received an invitation to the Antlic Islands, which were the only place where a Rriigkan hunter was going to find a decent quarry on this planet.

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The courtyard that overlooked the spring was plenty big enough for that small craft. It had landed a few yards away from where Rylee and Ray knelt in the dirt, just finishing up with their planting. It was Rylee who rose first to brush the soil from her work gloves and step forward to see what this was all about. It was a warm day and perspiration speckled her brow. She wiped at it with the elbow of her sleeve, and after hearing the young male's speech, turned to squint at the large main entry to the home, trying to remember if she'd seen Quar recently.

But Quar was already trotting cautiously out, ears lifted in curiosity and tail curving in wide, floaty arcs from left to right. She'd been pinged the moment the little flyer passed through the dome field. Rriigkhan version of a doorbell. Quar wore no clothing, having expected no visitors.

Seeing that she wasn't needed, Rylee stepped out of Quar's way and slowly walked back to Ray and the garden plot they'd been working on, though with her body half-turned so she could watch their exchange as she went. Rather, she made for a small tree just beyond it to get out of the sun, bordered by a stone half-wall at a good height for sitting on. The tree was one she referred to as a tinsel willow because of the ropes of thin, feathery, silver-green leaves that dangled like tinsel boas from the branches. They rustled dryly with every weak gust of wind passing through and were dotted with pale blue flowers. She began to drag the sweaty gardening gloves off her hands while she watched.

“What is this?” Quar asked presently, holding out her hands for the package, though even as she spoke the question an intense thrill of excitement raced down her spine, lifting the hairs of her ruff. The scents which clung to this male awakened a deep nostalgia in her, brought a flood of ancient, time-dulled emotions. Chiefly among them was the warm glow of childhood remembrance. “You are from the Antlic Islands..?” It seemed impossible. The guest slots were quite exclusive; the Islands capped the number of visitors at a low number to prevent hunting parties running into each other. Someone had traded favors for this.

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Though Ray had glanced over his shoulder at the little pod as it touched down, he'd gone back to his trowel, and finishing the row of holes he was digging ahead of Rylee's planting. Once she came back to get out of the way, he suspected he should follow suit and give Quar space with her visitor, but the urge to finish a 'batch' of the task he'd set himself to won out, and he dug the rest of the shallow holes that particular arcing row. The design was a combination of artistry and topography; the little bed wasn't any more flat than the surface inside Quar's home, so the garden, when blooming, would be a sort of visual reflection of the home's curves, and bridge to the regular geometry of the courtyard.

Once done, though, he fetched a couple of beading water bottles with clean, human-grade water inside, and offered her one beneath the shade of the tree.

The racer that had landed was very modern: a thin, glossy shell over a frame that probably weighed less than the Rriigkhan who rode inside, even with air containment and a few luxuries, so it was exceptionally nimble and suitable for the slalom-like ring-racing that was, like recreational battle, a popular, dangerous sport. It was roughly dart-shaped, with a tinted bubble for a cockpit, though once in side the pilot was more likely to pilot by AR so the craft wouldn't occupy his field of view. A near-hemispherical frame connected by gimbals off the back spar provided mounts for six outboard engines that handled all the thrust, lift and even most of the angling through control surfaces.

While the pilot's colors matched - he wore a full-body flight-suit and an open-crested helmet, which was currently tucked under his arm, the cut of his suit nodded to traditionalism as the narn-leaf did. A human equivalent might have been a tunic and trousers of modern fibers; he looked something like a pre-space-migration messenger pilot.

"I am," the male answered with a faux, dramatic gravity. "Ghara Quar Delfhan Nrahu? Your presence has been humbly requested; a mighty foe troubles our islands. You and three of your trusted hunt-sisters are needed to protect our lands. The, uhm," quickly, he referred to a cheatsheet that lit up from a small holo-display on his glove, "rock-louse is restless." He pressed the package to her hands and bid her open it, where she would find hand-written invitations, and documentation on the choice of beasts available to her to hunt.

"The rock-lice are currently a good hunt. The female is between broods, so she's available, but there are also three males to choose from if you'd prefer. That's what's been reserved for you, but if your preferences lie else where, we've got a Great Raharkite, a red Tamberlin, a pair of Mengar... lots of options. You're going to have a blast."

The pilot was speaking in Plenitongue, which of course Ray didn't know, but he'd picked up a few words, and understood 'rock' and 'louse' at least, both of which were fundamental concepts in Rriigkhan language. What he was imagining, however, wasn't even slightly close to the reality: the males were as large as crocodiles, the females could be as much as triple that. They made limestone deposits their home because they could burrow in and digest limestone, which meant their homes tended to be a pitch-black warren of caves and smoothsided chambers, frequently marked by pitfalls, usually-halfsubmerged, and very easy to get lost in, when they were empty. When rock-lice were actually present, there wasn't usually time to get lost: they hunted by heat, and favored warm-blooded meals to entrap in their 5 pairs of legs. Millenia ago, Rriigkhan young had been a favorite prey, but males could easily be overwhelmed, too, and old mythological stories often revolved around a hero retrieving one of her mates (or a mate she wanted to take) from a rock-louse who had deposited the male in some water-pitfall, to suck the juices from later.

"You'll have that island to yourselves - there's a permanent campsite in the trees, but you can make your own, too, with approval. I just need you to mark here that this is received; I can take your answer back now, or you can just respond over the net. But if it's no imposition, Ghara, I need to refresh before I get back in the air."

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Quar took the package in her hands reverently, untying it while the male spoke so she could shuffle through the lacy hand-written stationary cards after tucking the big narn leaf under her arm. Her tail jittered with such energy that the gestures were unintelligible; it danced like a streamer in a storm-wind, thought sometimes the end came down to thwap against the flagstone.

“I'll keep with the rock-louse already reserved. Whoever arranged this for me had their reason,” Quar said, beaming, oozing joyous pheromones into the air as she distractedly raised her eyes to the male. The invitation cards were unpersonalized except for her own name so that she could give them to whoever she wanted. (Delightfully quaint, especially with that beautiful calligraphy, but Quar wasn't going to be flying to someone's dome just to hand them a piece of paper.)

One of the cards, which she only glanced over briefly, explained the more mundane rules of the hunt. Among them was the stipulation that one alien servant was permitted per five guests on the Islands to help curtail contamination by Earth bacteria. Quar was already somewhat aware of this. The park was a recreation of Ssaar, the original Rriigkhan homeworld, and famous for its careful stewardship of the natural environment.

The earthy smells clinging to that leaf, the waxy texture when she rubbed it between her fingertips, it brought Quar back to a memory of moving through a forest with her own mother. Not a forest on Ssaar but a recreation somewhere else, as the original Ssaar had been ruined beyond repairing.

The visual parts of the memory were very dim, but the scent-memory lit in her brain like neon. Chittering birds in the dark canopy shake droplets of water down on her head, though the dirt under her pads is dry, so thick is the foliage. The hunting trail stretches on in front of her, a corridor through the trees fading into misty blue. With every breath she knew a hundred stories. They arranged themselves in the 4-dimensions of her mind: yesterday a grix had given birth to kits. A jortha and a fehn had quarreled over the carcass of a tsavii bird; the fehn had won.

She did not know these things, of course, but her mother had taught her to recognize the chemical compounds that indicated stress, fear, anger, so she could reasonably predict the mood of the animal. If chemical compounds from two different species existed in the same place and had decayed similarly, one knew those animals had likely met. In the mind of a child these stories were as vivid as folktales.

“You can send your answer back now that I accept,” Quar said. “As for my guest list, this is something I have to consider...” She was already sending a snapshot of everything in her visual field to Ghijariis with the text, Did you do this? Turning aside, she gestured sweepingly to indicate her home and the humans standing near the gardens. “Avail yourself to my servants and the accommodations of my dome.”

Rylee, not understanding the language but comprehending the gesture well enough, exchanged a quick glance with Ray.

“I got it,” she said under her breath, hastily tucking her dirty gloves into the belt that cinched her overalls. She didn't know why and had been tactful enough not to ask, but she had a feeling Ray wasn't quite in the mood to deal with a Rick. She strode across the courtyard with her chin up and her expression blanked.

“Is there something I can fetch for you, Ghara?” she asked as she neared, addressing the male.

Quar's attention was glued both to the cards in her hands, and to AR, as Ghijariis had just responded.

G: <A glyph which represented smug pheromones>

G: Yes, it was I.

G: There is a stipulation, however.

G: One of the guests must be Stahvren's sister, Dotta Auhrk. [Hyperlink to a profile of her personal history.]

Q: Why must I bring Stahvren's sister with us to the Antlic Islands? I have never met this person... I recall your complaints that she is annoying.

G: Yes, yes. She can be. Indulge me, Quar. I consider making Stahvren my husband... It might be to my advantage to be friendly with his family before I ask. However, you will decide the third guest.

Q: Oh? I shall have room for yet another if I don't bring you.

G: <Several smug glyphs in a row>

When Quar looked up again, both Rylee and the male had disappeared into the house. She could see Ray in the corner of her vision, but rather than call out to him, Quar opened her staff list and pinged him. Several times, with machine-gunfire clicks, which he would hear as repeated chimes that played over and reset the voice of the GPS telling him where to go: “Your presence – Your presence is – Your presence – Your presence is required fifteen feet to the East.” She turned toward him with quivering upright ears, her tail rapidly curling up and thumping down on the ground. Each time her tail touched down the longest hairs on the end splayed like the strands of a mop, only to be whipped back up again. She bounced lightly on the pads of her foot, claws slipping from their sheathes.

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"I'll patch your response in from inside. We'll only need your guest list a day in advance, so long as all the hunter are org-certified." Which of course any of Quar's friends were likely to be. It was the same requirement for playing in the league, the same requirement for ownership of her own dome, for maintenance of her own shuttle - the same supremely important and utterly dreary representation that the undersigned was aware of the interactions between native and invasive biosphere, of the special needs for interaction between the two, and the dangers of introducing invasive life to the unprotected Earth environment. Rock-lice might be an easily controlled species with modern technology and conveniences, but it would be embarrassing if a pilfered egg were to find itself nested under the limestone substrate near the North American seaboard, where they would likely find overcrowded human cities to be suitable prey for rapid population explosion. Likewise, bringing too much native Earth bacteria into the Antlic Island dome might give some of the hunt-beats the sniffles.

"Wind be with you, Ghara," the young male replied before politely waggling his crest for her and striding toward the open door. His tail whisked pertly behind him, but he hardly acknowledged Rylee, except to list, "Toiletry, protein, and water, in that order," and continuing on as though expecting her directions to reach him before he would need to take a turn inside.

The expression on Ray's face would have been recognizable to any child - the tight-lipped smile, the raised brow, the narrowed eyes that seemed to be accusing Quar of mischief, but couldn't really hide the twinkle or the humor that was on the verge of bursting out into another guffaw. No matter the gulf between the species, no matter how little he understood what had gone on between the male and her, her excitement was palpable, as was the humor in her summons. He'd always been particularly susceptible to the moods of others - and perhaps a bit too quick to jump to extremes himself, as the morning with Vern had exemplified - but he knew it. It was one of the reasons he'd stuck around Rylee for the afternoon; her cheer was contagious.

So - bared teeth be damned - his accusatory side-eye had already given way to a grin before reaching Quar. His neatly-combed hair had wilted in the sun, so he used a knuckle to push a lock up past his temple and chase away the sweat beading there. "Ghara, how may this humble human be of service? Shall I clean the windshield and fill her up with unleaded?" He couldn't help but sneak a closer look at the flyer while he was nearby, peeking through the screen into the cockpit bubble, looking down the glossy, ultra-smooth flightlines, admire the big engines on the ring mount. His hands hesitated nearby, but even if it had been human-owned, he wouldn't have touched someone else's hotrod without invitation. Instead, he faced her again, tucked his gloves through his belt, and clasped his wrist in front of his waist. "Did you buy this? It's pretty... well, awesome. Looks fast! But did that guy say something about lice?"

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“What? No, no, it belongs to the messenger boy,” she snipped, vexed by his missing the point. Quar had been studying the illustration of a Tamberlin on one of the cards while he spoke, all in inky grayscale, very stylized and suggestive of another age. She shuffled it to the back of the stack until the card depicting the rock-lice came up. She held it out for Ray to see, lifting herself up on her toe-tips before rocking back down again.

“I have been invited to the Antlic Islands to hunt this,” Quar announced proudly, head and shoulders wiggling to a music she felt in her soul as her spine straightened to give her just a little more height. Her tail continued to slap manically at the ground. “Or rather, you and I will go. Fortune licks you, human! Consider this your trial period as my nwohl . Assistant,” she amended quickly with the word he would understand and a dismissive wave of her free hand. “You have the privilege of experiencing a beauty few humans will ever know.”

Inwardly as outwardly, her chest swelled with joy. She wasn't thinking these thoughts consciously, really, but some part of Quar understood that she was rewarding the human for his kindness and loyalty. How could he not have wanted to be her nwohl ?

Not sensing immediate enthusiasm from him, her brow furrowed slightly and the wagging of her tail slowed. “Certainly Vern spoke to you about that by now?”

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"Ah." Ray was only a little disappointed that Quar wasn't keeping the racer, but he didn't have any stake in it. Easy come, easy go - it was still a pleasure to look at, but now he had all the more reason not to touch it. His focus turned instead toward what she held in her hands; he leaned in to take a closer look when she turned the paper toward him. At first glance, he didn't understand the excitement - it was a bug? - but then his eyes flicked over to the female Rriigkhan for scale, and his stomach twisted around and threatened to relieve him of breakfast and lunch both. "Oh my god."

He didn't even know the worst of it. As bad as it looked with its pincers and clawed leg-pairs, it's alien complex eyes, he couldn't read the details about how the limestone it ate deposited calcium in its plates, making it almost impossible to get a touch on the body inside. Unless it was already wounded - and certainly the Antlic Islands Resort wouldn't give them a wounded rock-louse to hunt - the only way to get a touch on it was from behind, slipping a weapon under its overlapping plates, or in the third or fourth leg socket. It required speed and precision, and a way of flanking or getting behind the creature, which of course the rock louse was not prone to allow.

"There is one of those on this planet, on Earth? You're going to go kill it?"

And all of that wasn't as bad as what she said next.

He took his reactions slowly. It was quite obvious that she was excited; unlike with Vern, Ray had no doubt about whether she saw this as some kind of sly punishment - it was a gift. Her infectious enthusiasm hadn't waned. But the expression drained out of his face, leaving him flat-eyed as his glance returned to the paper, and then back to her.

"He... did, yes. We spoke about that briefly. I, uhm. I don't think that's really my strongest suit, Ghara Quar. Not really what I'm cut out for. Unlike flow maintenance. That's me to a jot. I'm, uh, flattered, though, that you would think otherwise. But surely you'd want a human who's more enthusiastic for that sort of thing." His shoulders had tensed, not in anticipation of anything physical or even verbal in response for her, but because of the uncertainty in his own response. His lips moved as if he'd say more; he even took a sharp breath as thought about to add something quickly, but instead just doubled down, nodding. "Thank you, though. You honor me."

The weirdest thing about that was that he actually meant it.

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While he spoke, Quar began to wrap the cards up in the narn leaf again, more loosely, just so she would not need to carry the leaf under her arm anymore. Then the meaning of his words penetrated and she paused what she was doing to watch his face, his neck and shoulders, with intense eye-narrowing scrutiny. From a Rriigkhan she would take those words at their face value and assume he felt unsure of himself, but she had spent enough time around her human troops during the war games to know the entire race were sly-tongued evaders. He was saying no, I don't want to serve you.

Her entire body, from ears to tail, stiffened. This... hurt? A little barb twisted somewhere inside her, but in the next heartbeat Quar realized it didn't matter which human she brought. Her tail jerked to one side before it resumed its patting at the ground, though this time with a calmer tempo.

“I will take another servant, then. You creatures are interchangeable,” she said in a voice carefully aloof but edged with ice. She raked her gaze across his hairline. “Your skin has become sticky. Wash first if you have cause to enter my house.”

Sticky was the worst insult Quar could pluck from the air. Her species had not evolved alongside the bacteria that fed on human sweat, so she had no natural aversion to the smell as humans did. She was aware that humans disliked the odor – another thing she'd picked up from her troops – it just wasn't a fact that came to mind in that moment.

She brushed past him, leading with her shoulder, expecting him to move out of her way as she stalked back toward the house. There was absolutely no examination of her own actions in that moment. Quar knew she felt as though she'd been rejected, knew also that this was nonsense. That was all.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Just a week ago, the opportunity to say 'no' to a Rriigkhan would have been delectable, something to be savored. Some of that was deep-seated, baked in since his youth; some of that was the pressure of being compressed into this new mold of Rriigkhan employee for the good of a daughter who had disowned him, while the words 'serve' and 'servant' were the grit inside that were more likely to cause a scar than turn into some beautiful pearl. But that was a lot easier to savor when he could convince himself that Rriigkhan were not like him, didn't have feelings like him.

He'd liked Oranda's surgeon. Khiirhoshr didn't always chat; she just shared the space with him in his daughter's room, and made it very clear how eliminating every last cancer cell - and Oranda's comfort and success at recovery - were equally important to her. There was a gentleness to her voice, a real concern - that Ray was involved in Oranda's recovery (and Michelle, when she could make it out to Baltimore) seemed part of her treatment plan. It felt personal, not clinical. And the same was true when she spoke of politics; that, however, just reinforced everything about Ricks that he'd always felt.

Earth is a good planet for us. He'd heard her conversation in his head numerous times since. Whether they were actually her words, or just some paraphrasing of them he'd boiled down in his memory, he couldn't say, but they were the sort of thing that made his jaw grind. Humans are a good species for us. The local galaxies are full of species, and many of them aren't as good. Bad atmosphere, bad biosphere, maybe. Sometimes they are too large, too strong, too advanced, and settling into the proper relation with them would mean war. Sometimes they are impenatrable - silicon-based thought processes. Sometimes they are enslaved by the freedoms promised by the Rraatison Concord - you would be too, if we had not been the ones to contact you first. You should feel lucky. Humans are made for us, and we for you. It is your natural state to want to follow, to serve - without a true leader, you are rudderless, fight among yourselves, advance individuals rather than your species. You are a millennia behind where you could be technologically. It is our place to lead, to shepherd. This is simply natural law. When you, as a people, come to understand that you need a master to be whole, only then will you be able to truly thrive as you were meant to. Until then, there is a wound in your psyche like this cancer: it will make you eat yourself. I tell you this out of concern for your well-being, Ghrian Tanner. (It was her constant botching of his name that had convinced him to go under contract with his middle name.)

Yes, Khiirhoshr had been thoughtful, even kind, but she didn't seem to have feelings. She just smiled as patiently as the benevolent Rick face in the subway ads when he told her she was full of shit. Nothing he said or did - nothing Oranda said or did - seemed to unsteady her even keel; the closest was an unexpected relapse in the middle of remission, but it only seemed to amplify the surgeon's concern and resolve. Ricks didn't have feelings; they didn't get humanity, and that's why they were dangerous, wanting to devolve humans into mindless, faithful, servile automatons.

But here, Quar obviously not only had feelings, but they were hurt. There went that twisting in his stomach again, the regret of a misstep not because of what it might cost him (he was sure he was within his rights in the contract to stick to his job scope, and had explained multiple times what additional services he was willing to participate in), but because he'd hurt her. Her riposte was well-placed and painful enough to cause his eyes to narrow, but he recognized it. He'd weathered worse before from Michelle, though Quar seemed to be uniquely skilled at saying the one thing that would reinforce his opinion of Ricks. All interchangeable. "I suppose so. I have no cause to enter your house. I will work here." Sticky? Did she mean stinky?

Stepping back from her as she swept past, he went back to the garden, attempting to look as casual and unaffected as possible as he picked up where he'd left off with Rylee, even if he was only guessing at the pattern she had been laying out. And since Rylee was caught up with the messenger pilot inside the house, he was left alone, but not in a place where he was comfortable playing music from his badge - he'd be too easily caught.

A few minutes later, a figure stalked out of the front of the home. Even in his peripheral vision there was enough yellow and green, enough definition in the small crest and the hunch that he knew the black shape wasn't Rylee in her overalls, but he stopped to glance up anyway and wipe his brow with his sleeve.

The messenger walked quickly - not a lope, but a rush. His tail was rigid, lifted off the ground, his ears twisted to train behind him, his fur slicked to his skin. The body language translated better than Cant did.

Among other odd jobs, Ray had second-shifted as a security guard for almost ten years; he could pick a shoplifter out of a crowd nine times out of ten. All the signs were there - the Rick was swinging one arm less than the other, his attention was trained behind him but he refused to look, he was bee-lining to his vehicle with all the urgency of one who didn't want to seem urgent, and wanted to do that for as little time as possible. And - yep: he just had to look, had to check on his prize once he thought he was free - lifting his arm, he huffed in glee at something that glinted in the sunlight.

Ray should have just kept his lips shut and let it go, probably - that's what was expected of him, anyway, he assumed. He only had a glimpse of the thing, and he could have been wrong. He wasn't an expert on Rricks. Maybe Quar had given him a gift, and he just held it in a peculiar way. Maybe he just happened to be carrying around a duplicate of that dagger that Quar had on display with her armor in the hallway, the one that had a patina that suggested it was an original, centuries-old artifact rather than a reproduction printed out of one of her manufacturies. It had a peculiar shape, like a toothed leaf, or a frayed feather, a sort of deep serration that ran not perpendicular to the blade, but in rays out from the tang; he'd run into the shape a couple times since noticing it and learned that it was a figurative representation of a Rriigkhan tail. (The tail, like the left hand. Rriigks spoke of crest and tail as a human might their right and left, but in a different context. They were the natural pair of their body, but symbolic of their pride, of the way they displayed themselves: the crest was the rigid, impenetrable defense, the edifice of their worth within their clan or caste or whatever it was; their tail was the tell-tale display of their personality, vulnerable and as identifiable as a fingerprint, the soft display of who they were. The tail-blade was a left-handed weapon, a defense, a strike-breaker, and unique to whatever individual had owned it.)

"That's not yours." Ray's eyes were hard, his jaw set. His cant was perfect and concise.

The messenger's head whipped around as though he hadn't ever seen Ray before, as if the idea of a human speaking to him was absurd. "I hear only the wind." It wasn't just a phrase he'd come up with on the spot, Ray knew. It had connotations. Your word means nothing next to mine. Tell on me, and you'll end up with the blame. He lifted the canopy of his racer and started the engines firing before he'd even climbed inside.

Ray should have let it go. There was probably a camera, somewhere, that would show the theft. That would have been enough, even if the messenger was practiced and knew how to palm something that size. But it would have been a second injury to Quar in the same hour to let something prized like that go.

Instead, Ray did something he felt he'd regret even as he was doing it - he charged the Rick and tackled him. At least the kid never saw it coming. He was of a height with Ray, and not particularly bulky beneath his fur, but that still meant he was considerably stronger, and young to boot. What Ray had on his side was growing up with brothers and wrestling with neighbor kids, as well as a shorter trunk and longer legs. After the briefest of scrabbling, he was on the Rick's back, legs wrapped around his thighs so his heels hooked inside them, one arm holding the knife hand out at arm's length against the ground, the other under the Rick's shoulder and pulling up on his chin. He'd heard once that Ricks were like alligators, but reversed - all their musculature was focused on lifting the crest, not pushing their head down. With his chin pressed up, the Rick wouldn't be able to get the leverage to bash that crest into Ray's face and end it quickly.

"QUAR!" He shouted at the top of his lungs. "VERN! THIEF!"

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Quar was already quite deep in her home, heading for the dining room at the back of it, but the doorless, open space allowed her to hear Ray's call. In all her life there had never been any emergency that she could remember at home, so Quar's lope toward the entry was purely a result of perplexed interest and not urgency.

When she was close enough, however, to see the human on top of a Rriigkhan in the courtyard she broke into a sprint without pause, bursting from the shaded hallway and into sunlight, her howrf already expanding to spew red-hot indignation from her crest. They enlarged so the milk-white tips of them cleared the cavities. She'd heard the word thief, but now all she saw was a human physically attacking one of her own kind.

She'd crossed the space within seconds and ducked into a hunch without stopping, slamming hard into Ray's side with her arm and shoulder to fling him off the boy. She herself followed in a clumsy vault that took her over the male's body – with her momentum and her top-heaviness, there was no other way to keep from toppling after stooping over so low. She twisted and landed against the flagstone on her shoulder and side where she threw herself into a roll, arms reaching out to yank the human to herself. That part was purely instinct to keep the Rriigkhan boy safe from further assault. If she'd had time to think about it, Quar would have known Ray wasn't going anywhere after being slammed like that.

The boy was already up on his knees, smelling sharply of fear, patting frantically at his ruff and then down his body in search of injuries. The end of his tail jittered wildly. The knife lay on the ground just beside his knee. He whisked it up and slid it into his bag very quickly, then turned his horror-stricken face toward Quar and Ray. Quar hadn't noticed that; her attention lay entirely on the human.

“That – That – That filthy beast attacked me!” he cried in voice-cracking shrillness.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Just a moment of stepping out of the moment would have been enough for Ray to see what it looked liked. When he saw Quar bowling for them, his gut assumption was that there would be a tussle, but one that would relieve him of trying to constrain the Rick that outweighed him, was stronger, and would find a way out of his grasp as soon as he thought about it. Quar's shoulder caught him squarely in the unprotected side, and he was a ragdoll even before she had him tackled against the courtyard stone beneath her.

Ow.

The air was gone from his lungs, and the vacuum ached. His diaphragm didn't want to draw more, but the weight of her would have made it difficult anyway, and the claws that gripped his arm and opposite side were none too gentle. A moment later the sharp stab of a rib-break finally made it through the adrenaline; he recognized that almost saccharine, sickly character of it that prodded into his guts and made him want to vomit a little. He hadn't even realized the kid had gotten his arm into his mouth until he saw the scrap of the 'untearable' overall fabric spit out from behind his lip.

But it was right there. The knife. Out in the open, unmistakable, definitely Quar's. He knew Quar could understand English; the male, maybe not. "He's stealing from you," he wheezed into the stone, cheek flat, eyes red and at ant-level, before dragging in a new breath and regretting it when his lungs swelled and strained that rib. "Fancy tail knife." It was all he could manage - his hand patted weakly at her, trying to tell her he'd given up, she needed to get off.

The messenger had hurried to climb back into his cockpit and had a hand on the canopy, urging it forward than the mechanial speed at which the pistons wanted to seal it back into place. "You need to file that beast's teeth! It is a lucky thing for him he did not injure me, Ghara, or I would file a complaint!"

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Ray's body was a warm, solid mass of bones and muscle half-squished under the bulk of her belly. The way her claws indented the softness of his flesh was delicious, thrilling despite her fury. That wasn't a conscious thought, only a feeling at the back of Quar's brain, unnoticed with all the other stimuli jostling for attention in the moment. When her grip loosened red beads welled up from the pinpricks her claws had made along his skin. Those words and the new comprehension they brought flipped a switch in her mind, though Quar still didn't totally understand the situation. She yanked her head up to glower at the male, shoving herself upright with a palm on the ground, then scrambling to her paws over Ray.

“Come here,” she snarled, already stalking toward him. Her howrf still peeked from their cavities, twitching, pulsing, but now with the commanding pheromones that, for a human, might be the equivalent of a stern glare from someone much older. “If you leave in this craft I will shut off the permeability of the field!”

She didn't stop when she reached him, but grabbed the canopy by its lip and shoved it back, simultaneously using her other hand to fist the boy's ruff at the back of his skull and drag him out of his seat. There was firm, controlled strength in her grip. It wasn't the wild attack she'd made on Ray. If he really had her Jheris dagger on his person, she wouldn't risk it being jostled.

“Stop this! Stop this!” the male screeched, grabbing at her hand with his own. His clawed feet scrabbled against the ground.

“Calm yourself,” Quar hissed, tightening her grip, twisting her fist in his fur for better leverage, and giving him a little shake.

The commotion had brought not only Rylee running from inside the house, but a sleek mirror-finish drone with an oblong bullet shape. It zipped past the struggling figures and curved back around until it hovered at chest level by the Rriigkhans. The male, recognizing it as a security drone, went limp in Quar's hands. He did not want to find out whether the drone was equipped with tasers, lasers, or neural stunners.

Rylee had flattened herself against the wall, watching all of this in wide-eyed horror. As soon as the male ceased to struggle she raced across the courtyard, yelling, “Ray! Oh my God!”

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

The pilot's ears could not be pressed any more flatly to his head. His little racer could have lifted off with Quar's weight, too - plenty of similar models had a passenger seat behind the pilot's. But it would have struggled with balance, and no amount of button-mashing would have closed the canopy on Quar's arm; worse, if she fell, the assault claim she could bring against him would be an order of magnitude worse than any theft charge. That was before the possibility of being trapped inside the dome. So the craft's full weight returned to the courtyard stones, though he didn't have an opportunity to shut the engines down completely before he was dragged out, feet stretching to find the ground and support his weight rather than hanging from his ruff.

He had his hand on his hard-sided bag, and the strap wrapped on his arm; when he came out, he couldn't let go of it fast enough, so the bag tipped the few things that were in it - papers, a few processed protein bars, and the glinting Jheris dagger - onto the seat he'd just been pulled out of. He could see it coming, tensed as it happened, went limp when the moment and past and he was caught with the item, then tensed again as the new plan formed.

"It was the human beast! It saw me admiring the blade; it wants it for itself! It put it in the bag to blame it on me when it attacked me! They are sticky, filthy, thieving things," he accused in Plenitongue, his dark eyes wide and pleading with Quar. He had a handsome face - balanced, narrow-snouted, and his etched crest was fashionable; he knew he had the sort of face that won him undeserved favors, and he was skilled at using it. "You know they are - your first instinct was the right one. The human attacked me! You saw it. That's when it put the blade in my bag. I would not take from a Nrahu casted."

Ray hadn't moved from where Quar left him on the stones. Even lifting his head seemed like a bad idea at the moment, and laying still seemed like the best way to avoid future injury or trouble. Sitting up was out of the question for a moment or two, until he could steel himself to deal with the rib. Just because some Rick meditech would have him stitched up before night didn't mean it wouldn't hurt now, and frankly he didn't want to give Quar a reason to step on his back or something while she figured the situation out. Fortunately, he'd landed with his head to the door, so he could see Rylee as well as hear her.

His eyes blinked slowly; at his side only his elbow bent, raising his hand so he could wave it, fingers spread, in an attempt to keep Rylee out of it. No, he mouthed. Stay back. It's okay. The last thing he needed was to get someone who had been kind to him caught up in this, too.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Another person might have said to the messenger boy, If you're innocent you can be quiet. We will watch the surveillance holo together. But Quar owed him no explanation and felt no compulsion to speak. She gently shoved the male away from herself so that she now stood between him and the cockpit. Releasing her grip on his fur, she leaned inside to cut the engine. Her main goal, however, was to keep him from touching that dagger. If it received a single scratch she would rain blood and thunder on this idiot.

As she pulled back from the cockpit, one arm extended and fingers splayed in case the male made an unexpected movement, she saw Ray unmoving on the ground. She froze. The painful constriction in her chest made her suck in a sharp breath, yet she felt as though she'd got no air. No NO NO! His blood, Sam's blood, scent-memory bloomed in her brain – but just as suddenly as the panic surged she realized he was moving. Breathing. That awful sensation, heavy as lead, still rolled down her limbs in waves until it could dissipate.

“Are you injured?” she belted, but already she was firing off commands to Vern in AR.

Send a pair of humans and a stretcher from the servant's quarters. Have my jet ready on the open ground by the stable. It was too large to land by the house without crushing some of the gardens.

Enforcers will be here in a few minutes, was his reply. I am forwarding the appropriate surveillance footage to them now.

“It did bite me,” the Rriigkhan sniffed, thinking that Quar had addressed him. He'd stepped away from her, arms over his chest. Quar rounded on him then, arm raised as if she were about to backhand him, ears flattened to her neck and lips pulled back from teeth in an ugly snarl that made the male cringe away. She never struck him. Her arm trembled where she held it, inches from her own muzzle, the fist spasming between tight and loose. Finally she let the arm drop, just as the curtain of her lips dropped over her teeth, though still wrinkled in fury.

Now she saw Rylee in the corner of her vision. The woman had stopped a few feet away with knees bent, wringing her hands and glancing desperately between Quar and Ray.

“Go to him,” Quar said thickly, not removing her pinning glare from the male. Rylee scuttled forward and dropped to one knee at Ray's side. She had no idea that it was Quar who attacked him.

Quar's own personal flyer was already settling down on the broad area between the stable and the main house. The cockpit was really more of an observatory roomy enough for four Rriigkhans to comfortably lounge, with a sloping nose and a crystal clear windshield set in barbs that resembled teeth above and below. The wings curved down to brace runners against the ground before sweeping dramatically back, a wyvern crouching on its wing-claws. Vern had probably piloted it remotely to save time, but even so the AI was good enough to handle such a simple landing. The inertial dampener on her craft meant Ray wouldn't have to be strapped into an upright seat as he would have on the human transport.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

As the scene unraveled, and any hope he had for control slipped through his claws, the messenger went limp, backing against his racer (causing it to rock and lean slightly in the process), then sliding dejectedly to the ground. His tail didn't move at all, his ears drooped, and his fur lay flat in a subconscious attempt to make himself smaller. His mind wanted to race ahead to a story, to what would get him out of this mess the human had made for him - at the very least some bargain to drop any complaint against this beast she so favored that she called in a ship just for him, in exchange for forgetting about the blade, but that would undercut any other argument he could make.

Surprisingly sensibly, he remained quiet.

"Hurt more than injured, I think," Ray explained in quick, shallow breaths once Rylee was close enough that he didn't have to raise his voice. "Staying down seemed smarter at "Won't be a big deal. Maybe help me sit up?"

Then again, as soon as he braced his arm on the stone to roll himself to his side, he changed his mind when that same sickening pain shot into his side. "Or maybe I'll just be a baby here for a few minutes more. But I'm fine. Promise."

A few staff security, humans still buckling on padded vests and with numbsticks dangling from their wrists (no Martine among them, Ray noted) had arrived just to be at the ready, even if their presence wasn't strictly needed at the moment. Looking a bit sheepish for not being where they were needed, they hovered at the periphery of the courtyard, then stepped aside as a couple more servants in their standard ICG overalls arrived; one carrying a handled case in one hand. Checking first for space, he threw it out parallel to Ray; Bars on the side of the case clicked out with a strong spring action, and the entire case telescoped out into a stretcher that would have been big and strong enough for a Rriigkhan. Once it was settled at Ray's side, the older man with thinning hair who Ray had always seen working in the garage, even if he never came to the maintenance office (Mark? Matt? Something like that, Ray thought), asked, "Ready to roll over?"

"Yep, no problem. Not a big deal." Ray answered over-cheerily, still with shallow breaths, but then he barely bit off the yelp as they did exactly that. "Sorry."

"Broken ribs, Ghara," the man said as he glanced up to Quar. "We'll get him on the transport. Should we leave without you?" Not entirely waiting for her answer, he nodded to his counterpart, muttered under his breath, "One, Two, Lift," and they both stood together, Ray suspended between them. "I have a dose of Benzopene I can give him for the pain. Mary is meeting us at the transport - she can do a preliminary study for more serious injury, but he's probably fine to wait as needed as long as he doesn't move around or keep yapping."

The messenger hissed. "Crippled by pain? And you listen to him over your own kind?" It wasn't entirely directed at Quar; it was rhetorical, but there was still reasonable hope he could win her back to his side, if she wasn't some kind of human-lover.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

“Yes, go,” Quar answered with a flick of her claws, only briefly turning her gaze on Ray to see that he was being lifted up. She could not be faulted for instinctively siding with a member of her own species, especially considering Ray appeared to have attacked the boy. Nevertheless, shame settled darkly over her, shoving her muzzle down so that her chin was tucked almost on her neck. She crouched beside the male and regarded him wearily, hands on her knees, tail curled around her paw. Once again she ignored his baiting even if the hidden insinuation in his words rankled.

“You cannot be stupid enough to think my artifacts are unprotected. You or an accomplice were planning to hack my security systems later, perhaps replace the footage with something else. I already know it was the Chaun Hagh Society. They have harassed me about this particular dagger for too long.” The male's scent changed, a spike of fear. He curled inward with his face in his palms. Quar herself felt drained from that furious burst of emotion. She lacked the energy to be angry with the stupid little thing any longer, so she sighed and stood.

Rylee had quickly gotten out of the way to make room for the men with stretchers, but she hovered at the periphery of the scene. Quar lifted her chin, crooked a finger at the human.

“Fetch a robe from my room. It doesn't matter which one. The field will be open to you.”

It was ten minutes later that enforcers from the Earth Security Force arrived in a pair of matte-white flyers not much larger than the thief's racer, though much less flashy. Both officers were males. Their light body armor matched a basic Rriigkhan fur pattern, brown and tan agouti. Because Quar belonged to the Tsarkeh caste and the thief was Ourif, he was arrested immediately and without question, although the dagger was scanned for fingerprints and the oils secreted by both fur and pad. It was understood that if they did have questions for Quar, she would reply to them at her leisure over the net.

Vern had gone by now, as a Rriigkhan pilot was required by law in case of an emergency that an on-board AI could not handle. Quar had only to ask and one of the security enforcers happily obliged her with a lift to Kalispell, Montana, location of the nearest Rriigkhan-run hospital for humans. It was a guaranteed privilege for anyone working an ICG contract to be treated in such a place.

Humans themselves treated broken ribs, or rather, failed to treat them, by allowing the bone to heal on its own. A Rriigkhan meditech would perform a minor surgery that involved cutting into the subject and mending the break with a bone glue, then stitching the incisions with an artificial muscle, then artificial skin that would reduce the chance of scar tissue forming. This required the patient to be sedated, however briefly.

Because his injury was not life-threatening there had been a bit of a wait, and when Quar arrived outside Ray's room the meditech was just leaving. The recovery suite looked very much like an ordinary hospital room any human would be familiar with, though more richly decorated, with wainscoting painted a surf green and light floral wallpaper. The regular instruments were hidden away in cupboards and chests. There were no visible monitoring devices. That was not necessary for something so simple. Ray had not even been brought to an operating room; the procedure had been finished right here, any spillage of blood wicked away by a field.

“This is your servant, Ghara? He'll be waking about now,” the meditech said, greeting Quar with a dipping of his crest as the room door shut behind him. He was a slender-framed male whose crest didn't even come up to the top of Quar's ribs, and he gazed softly up at her with natural brown eyes. “Humans can be groggy when coming out of sedation, but as soon as he feels ready to stand he may leave.”

“Understood.”

Quar lifted her chin to peer in through the glass upper portion of the door, through which she could see Ray clearly in his bed. Her ears sagged, then folded back. The meditech, knowing he had been dismissed, had already slipped past her. Quar stood mostly alone in a plushly carpeted hall, with only the sound of doors quietly clicking shut or creaking open further down the corridor at either side of her. From the window in the door she could see the huge picture window in Ray's room, which overlooked the city of Kalispell. They were on one of the upper floors. Her tail curved behind her like a hook, the end twitching with the slow but jerky movements that indicated stress. Her hands were clasped behind her back. She wore the high-necked clamshell-collar robe of a few days before, as it had been thrown near her bed and was the first thing Rylee grabbed.

She was picturing Sam lying in that bed instead, hooked up to beeping, hissing machines. (She had done a little research on what “life support” meant, out of morbid curiosity.) She pictured herself entering the room, settling her palm on the human's head fur as an act of comfort while he quietly died, and then it wasn't Sam anymore but Ray, who had selflessly protected one of her most valuable possessions. Then she remembered Lahroujel's distasteful pawing at her khar vitra. Quar's jaw tightened and the corners of her lips curled down, her nose crinkling.

She had not meant to hurt him. Even if she had thought Ray the aggressor in the situation, breaking his rib wasn't her goal. He was just... so fragile. Her shoulders lifted and fell with a sigh.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

The Kalispell Repair Ward was busy. That went almost without saying, even in so small a town. Before the Rriigkhan advent, human hospitals had been busy in an entirely different way: crowded, operating hours behind the pace of urgent need, filled by those who were waiting for one thing or another - to be seen, to be discharged, for medicine to enter or leave their body, for one of the myriad of paperwork operators to operate the reams of paperwork that simple procedures required. The state of the medical system on Earth was one of the three markers that allowed the Rriigkhan to consign them to provisional status under the Concord (along with a disunified governing body and the differential between exploratory and military technology).

Rriigkhan hospitals tended to be busy in other ways. Without request for payment, without the deliberations over insurance coverage and patient history retrieval delays, waiting had largely been minimized. But that only meant that more humans came for service. So many had put off medical care for so long that once it was free, a culturally-imprinted instinct drove the to take as much of it as they could get, and they flocked to the Rriigkhan for every little ache and malady that anyone sensible would have simply diagnosed with a reader and scheduled for treatment, or simply ignored until their next regular visit. In the first few years after Advent, this might have been predictable; that it continued decades later, and among those who had been born after Advent, was a perplexing sociological feature worthy of study (and perhaps yet another reason why humans needed a much longer term of stewardship.) Likewise, humans seemed to be frustratingly disinclined to believe the scanners, and provided entirely inconsistent and unreliable reports about their degrees and qualities of pain, even when they were attempting to be helpful. A meditech who had blunted her teeth on Earth could consider assignment anywhere else in the galaxy afterward a luxury.

Ray had his own room for recovery purely because he had arrived by Quar's personal transport, and the word 'Tsarkeh' had circled through the staff. A meditech had awaited Quar's arrival because of that; there was no need for her to spend any time wondering at his location or status, much less for her to stand in the larger operation theater where young Rriigkhan working through their decades of clan service buzzed about from bed to bed like pollinating insects, while humans came and went from them as their assigned numbers dictated on a big semi-holo screen. The features in Ray's room were sized to accommodate someone of Krist or Lahroujel's size, making him seem small on bed on which he lay.

Another interesting thing about humans was how difficult it was to manipulate their sedation. They could be sedated, obviously, and had figured out how to do it themselves despite the difficulty, but it was notoriously imprecise, not quick to fade, and left them (amusingly?) inebriated. At some point, Ray's eyes had opened and - glazed and bordering on wondrous - peered out the window, which mean arching his back and twisting his head the other way - looking above and behind him - which made locks of his already-mussed hair stand up in spikes like a bird's crest. Both arms had been tucked under the sheet that covered him; he slowly removed each - without any apparent recollection for the reason he was here or that it should have hurt him to do so.

Both arms were completely bare, as were the shoulders he exposed; the further up his arms one went, the more linework solidified into richly-colored patches. On his shoulders themselves, two winged figures were barely visible as he shifted under the sheet: they faced eachother and bore weapons as though ready to engage in battle of the sort Quar might apppreciate. On the left, a figure in purples and reds and blacks with membrane wings stretching down his arms lifted a morningstar as though ready to strike; on the right, a figure in whites and yellows and blues, with feathered wings, held a flaming sword in hanging guard, ready to block it.

Ray blinked as he came around, looked down at himself, and before noticing Quar made a sour face at finding himself naked. His overalls and shirt had simply been cut off, as was easiest; new ones had been printed and hung from a wooden tree-stand nearby. Holding the sheet over his belly, he stretched again, caught himself to check his ribs, worked his arm through a circle, and then moued and nodded his head in a sort of semi-grudging praise, and then pulled his undershirt to him to drag down over his slender body. Almost as soon as his head was through, he saw a card that had been left for him by the meditech listing his recovery regimen (no heavy labor for 24 hours; he could wear a sling but it wasn't required) and other scanned conditions (minor malnourishment and dehydration, metal fillings that should be replaced with new teeth, caffeine addiction, possible pre-cancerious indications in his digestive tract). When he snatched it up to read it over, his eyes passed above it to Quar.

"Oh. Did you find the knife?" As the first words out of his mouth, they were slurred, stumbling over each other. "Wait - let me get dressed. Please? Can you darken the window? I'm naked here. They took off my overalls, but not my boots; this will take a minute."

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Between the door that stood between them, which muted much of the noise inside the room, his slurred speech and her startlement to see him talking, Quar did not parse the meaning of his words. She'd been intending to leave without speaking to him, but now she pushed in like she owned the place. (And technically, she did. The hospital was part of her obligation to the locals in exchange for the land she used.)

She stood straight-backed with one hand clasping the other on the small of her back, head tilted so she could look down on him from so high as she moved near his bedside. Her ears rotated with uncertainty until they faced him. A glance over his arms told her that the pricks she had made on his skin were totally healed now. It did not occur to Quar to apologize, even though she felt sorry.

Where she had come from, it was totally ingrained on servants that they were like property to be done with as the master pleased. She could have beat one for a transgression if she'd really wanted to. She could beat them for fun. That was unlikely to happen, though, because they could request a new job at any time, and one was likely to lose all their staff doing that. But it was possible, and some servants might tolerate the outbursts on bad days if most days were peaceful.

On Earth things were different. Humans had more protections under the law during this transitional period in which they were being acclimated to their status, but that did not change how Quar had lived for sixty years prior.

“You protected my property at great risk to yourself,” she began.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Ray had the edge of the sheet in hand to whip back, and a thigh half out of the bed when the door swung in, and the windows noticeably did not darken.

"I'm naked!" His eyes were wide, more shocked than offended; the momentum of thought wasn't quite enough to stop his action, but he yanked the sheet back over his lap, pinning it in place with an arm drawn across his waist. "I'm naked," he said again at a more normal pitch, as he was beginning to realize that he could breathe fully with no pain or hitch in his side. Through the shirt, he felt at his ribs, lifting that arm to palpate six inches beneath his armpit. He could only just feel the tissue graft, and it wasn't exactly tender. And while it wasn't numb, either, it was closer to that, that strange feeling one got in their jaw after an old-style dentist visit, when everything feels swollen, but they could swear they still felt pressure. A little more exploration isolated a horizontal stripe around that one side of his body, about the width of his hand, where he could still feel his own touch, and a bit of the cool, Rick-temperature air against his skin (it was goose-pimpling there), but when he pinched it with fingernails, the pain reached a certain threshhold and then plateaued, even though he pinched hard enough that he would likely leave a bruise. "Hunh."

When Quar spoke, though, his attention snapped back to her; his bright eyes had a bit more focus than seconds ago. "Sort of. Yes. I was kind of thinking of it more as protecting your feelings."

He frowned, glancing between the window and the overalls hanging from their hook, and gathered the sheets around himself as he stood. His boots hit the ground heavier than intended, and he had to stay in one place for a moment before he stopped seeing silver static over his vision, but then - still toga-wrapped, he went to the window controls himself to darken them. "Did you get it back? The knife? I didn't catch everything that happened there, at the end, though it's coming back."

Now that the window was closed, he sat in the chair and lifted one ankle to his knee (without any of the considerations that went along with wearing a sheet-skirt and nothing beneath) and loosened the straps on the boot so he could pull it off, then work on the next. "But I wasn't really thinking of it as dangerous at the time, to be honest."

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

“Dress yourself then, human,” she huffed, ears swiveling back momentarily. She followed his gaze to the coat rack, took a step near it, and lifted his overalls from the hook. Wrapping them around her palm to make a loosely folded square of them, she flung them toward the bed with a flick of her wrist just as Ray began to rise from it. She misjudged the distance and the garment landed on the foot of the bed. The greater portion of the folded square hung off the edge. Dragged down by its own weight, the overalls slid slowly toward the floor, then dropped completely in a heap.

Oops.

“My feelings,” Quar repeated slowly, then snorted. She watched him pull off his boots with casual disinterest and no allowance whatsoever for his modesty. During training days, her troops were housed in a communal barrack with little privacy and she had seen naked humans there a number of times. Those men did not act shy around her or each other. “My feelings are worth nothing compared to that artifact, an original Jheris commissioned by the Monarch Titalli –” She cut a hand through the air before replacing it behind her back. “That is meaningless to you. I've incensed a coalition of historians by bringing such an artifact to Earth. They would rather I loan it to a museum than keep it for my private collection. I suspect they were behind this somehow. And yes, it was recovered. The male, arrested. He very likely would have got the dagger off Earth successfully if you had not intervened.”

She angled her body away from him and paced toward the large picture window to stand before it, looking down at the city streets. Her tail, still curved like a hook, continued its slow, pensive twitches. Ray's reflection was barely visible in the window but she looked past that into the deepness of her thoughts.

“I want you for my nwohl,” she said, the words rolling along at a stolidly plodding pace, like she was considering them even as she spoke them. “You are a good fit for such a role. You perform some of its functions without being told to do so. I do not understand why you resist my wishes.” She lifted her eyes to his reflection, then turned her face so that she could see him from the corner of her eye.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Ray's eyes closed. He sighed, audibly, then bent at the waist to pick up the overalls, flinging them out so the legs draped across the floor. The sheet began to slip, so he held the overalls against his belly to hold that up, too, and worked the zipper down the front. As smooth as butter, brand new, with just the sort of action a magstripe should have. His tag was even up in the chest pocket where he kept it overnight. Turning around to face away from her at least, he threw the sheet back onto the bed in a wad and stepped into the overalls one leg at a time. Maybe he should have worn underwear with the shirt. Maybe socks. But Rick clothes didn't require the extra layer, and that was one old redundant custom he'd been happy to do without until that moment.

"Fair enough. I'm glad it was important. A monarch's dagger didn't seem like the sort of thing you'd give to the messenger as a door prize."

With the stripe closed againt to mid-chest, Ray took a moment to straighten himself out to line up the legs and cinch the waist, to poke his tag back into place on the outside of the pocket and to smooth back his hair back where it had fallen forward. Except for the fact that he was a hundred miles away from the dome, it was as if nothing had really happened. Backing into the chair again, he began twisting his foot into the boots - on was easier than off, when the boot would cinch itself once his heel was flat.

"No," he agreed from the chair. She didn't understand why he'd decline. "That's part of the problem, really. I, uhm..." Sighing again, he pressed his lips together tight enough that the muscles around them bulged, and his eyes peered down at the unusual, seemingly non-repeating pattern in the floor, though he wasn't really looking at the tile. "I'm not a servant, Ghara Quar." Somewhere along the way in the last day, he'd lost the sarcasm he'd been putting into that word; he wasn't quite sure when it had gone. "I'm a contract employee. To me, that distinction means the world. That distinction salvages my pride, just a little. It's not you. Not because of you. You're alright, you know. In your own way. I like you. So I don't mind... you know. Doing 'nwohl' things for you, because then it's my choice, too." Did Ricks have the whole 'It's not you; it's me' line? Probably. It was probably a universal feeling. He lifted his eyes to peer at her directly, remembering full well what Vern had told him, and meeting her gaze because of it, with a little bit of defiance glinting in them.

"If I became that ...thing. Nuwole. I would be a servant. And I would be a stubborn old man. Does that make sense? Do you understand that at all? If you do something because you want to - even if you're asked to - or if you do something because you are told to, it's different, isn't it? Maybe it's just me and my feeble human intellect - I don't know."

Finally he stood, straightening and stretching, and stepped back over beside her where he'd left the card with his instructions and diagnoses, which he folded in half and slipped into the abdoment pocket on his overalls. "Besides, you should see the maintenance list they gave me. I need a lot of work. Look, I'm going to watch the videos Vern gave me. If you want, I could have another try at that grooming thing again. It's kind of soothing. And I can keep your armor for you until you find..." He stopped there, biting his tongue rather than finish the thought and imply Sam was interchangeable, just as she'd told him.

"But pouring wine for your besties, and bowing and scraping, and saying just the right thing without looking anyone in the eye? I'll just embarrass you or me or both nine times out of ten."

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Quar turned her back to the window as he spoke, watching him with intense, brow-furrowing scrutiny and following his movements with her ears. She braced the heel of one hand against the sill of the window and leaned some of her weight on that, standing very still. The other fist rested against the front of her thigh.

She did not understand. His defiance prickled hotly under her skin, but it wasn't.... it wasn't something that bothered her seriously.

“It's because you think you are a Tsarkeh,” Quar said slowly, as if she were explaining it to herself rather than him. For a moment she looked past him, through him. She hadn't spent much time talking to humans, really didn't consider them much at all. Now it was painfully obvious. She felt stupid for not realizing sooner. They were a planet full of Tsarkehs – not really, most of them lived in poverty, but the worst of her world was the best of theirs.

And how would Quar feel if she suddenly lost all her power and was forced to serve a superior being? It would sting, certainly. Maybe she would even rather die.

She clicked her claws idly on the sill, still staring through his midsection with her ears pressed back. She should be deeply offended that he was giving her options, offering to do this or that but rejecting other aspects of service... but speaking to him felt, astonishingly, like speaking to an equal. The result was an intensely uncomfortable sensation deep within her.

What if I agree that he does not have to perform serving tasks in front of others? she wondered, then was met with a visceral wave of distaste that showed on her face as a wrinkling of her lips. She wasn't going to bargain with him! The very thought made her angry, made her want to subjugate him just to teach him where he belonged. Her hackles lifted at that ugly, malicious thought.

Then, a name popped into her mind. Oranda. The day before, she had browsed through his employee profile. It included a background check that compiled more information than Ray probably knew the ICG had on him, including archives of his social media accounts and those of his family. She remembered that he had a daughter. She had been surprised by this at first, because very few people she knew were parents, but humans bred like pinchflies on the corpse of their own planet so of course he had offspring.

She lifted her muzzle and her eyes to his eyes.

“I know you have a price, you little Capitalist,” she spat the word, though her eyes glittered with mirthful triumph. She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin imperiously. “Is it Oranda, your child? I will give you whatever would please her, if increased pay for yourself will not do it.”

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

No, she didn't understand, not if that was how she saw it. Or maybe she did, as far as was possible - after all, she didn't seem to be angry, not in the way angry Ricks were usually portrayed. He shook his head only slightly and screwed up his lips toward one cheek, but that was the extent of his disagreement. Tsarkehs are a collective figment of the imagination, and a drain on the well-being of the whole. Our own Tsarkehs are the root of every problem you blame humanity for. But that voice in his head sounded twenty, and more than a little naive. Maybe he did want to be a Tsarkeh, in his own way. How realistic was an 'anarcho-socialist collective', or whatever it was he'd been agitating for then, when he was younger? No 'anarcho-socialist collective' built the hospital that cured Oranda.

He knew a little better - enough to avoid making any kind of declarative philosophical statements. He'd had enough of those thrown back in his own face to realize that he wasn't smart enough or educated enough to support them - it was all gut instinct, all emotion that let him be angry at someone else. Here he was now, perpetuating the system, offering to groom a 'Tsarkeh' on his own time out of the goodness of his heart, like a good little servant-monkey. He would, too, and not hold it against her, as long as he had the fiction of 'choice' to cling to.

On the verge of asking her if he should wait in the flyer - he hardly expected her to extend the 'honor' she'd offered him a third time - he glanced up at her, lips parted, when she spoke first.

Capitalist. At one point in time, that would have been an insult that stung; instead, an amused grin spread across Ray's face, honest enought to drive it lopsided and turn his eyes to squints. The ironic thing is that she probably did mean it as an insult, and didn't see herself as one, what with her ownership of the means of production down in Big Sandy and half the surrounding countryside. That word was enough to convince him that, no, he couldn't be bought after all; he hooked his thumbs on the belt of his overalls and shook his head again, ready to laugh it off, when she said the magic word.

The grin was gone in an instant. Panic, more than rage, replaced it, but it was a complicated emotion that didn't really have a single name. His expression went blank, his eyes stoney and calculating. It was fight or flight; his heart was suddenly beating hard in his chest, flooding his brain with freshly oxygenated blood, and his hands slipped from the belt loops to make fist at his side. Fight or flight, and when it had come to his family, it was always fight - flight was reserved for situations where he was the only one threatened. He took a few heavy breaths through his nose.

He knew exactly what she wanted, Oranda. Not because she told him - God, no; she hadn't called him anything but names since Michelle - but he still anonymously browsed her page every month or so, just to keep up. She probably knew, kids these days, anonymous or not. She remembered Michelle's birthay; not his. She spoke about a future of solving every one of humanity's ills, including addiction.

His words were slow, sonorous, careful. "She wants an internship at the Outreach Hospital in Baltimore, after she's finished Med School. She has the grades for it. She's good enough. She just needs the chance. I'll do whatever you want for the rest of my contract if you make sure she gets the most of that chance."

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

His grin was enraging. She had the satisfaction of seeing it wiped clean of his face. She had the satisfaction of smelling the panic ooze from him. Something about that smell from a prey species pinged a part of her brain she seldom used. It thrilled her in a muted, distant sort of way... but an equally distant sensation was a sinking in her gut. It was a sense that she had watched something beautiful and irreplaceable destroyed in front of her eyes. Whatever that “sinking” was, it was rolled over immediately by a wave of triumph, and then it was a little dark point disappearing into the depths of her soul never to be recalled. She was happy.

She pushed away from the sill to cross her arms over her chest, stretching her claws out of their sheaths momentarily before they slipped back inside.

“Is that all?” she asked smugly, tail thumping against the wall. She whipped it aside to curl around her ankle as she moved toward him, stopping a few feet away so she could look down her snout at him. Rather than wag outright, an undulating tremor now ran down the length of her tail. She propped an elbow on top of the wrist that was still curled over her ribcage to make a dismissive flicking-away gesture with those fingers. “It is the most trivial thing you could ask for. It is done. Now, human, you begin to see how we can mutually benefit one another. Naturally servile as you are, you will quickly abandon your prejudice and find life more agreeable as my treasured asset. You will so love the Antlic Islands. I will take Ghijariis as my hunt-sister, who you will see much of, and... hmm, perhaps Nissrokr. Yes, I've not seen her in too long.”

The words tumbled happily out of her without pause as she moved toward the door and dropped her arms to her sides to nudge it open with a shoulder. Her mind had raced past Ray entirely to inhabit another time – already she was planning the gear she would bring, imagining the scents and sights she would experience, tasting freshly killed game. The undulations of her tail became fast curls that slapped at the floor. She glanced back at him only briefly as she went out, just to make sure he was following. She moved with her head high, with absolute confidence in herself and her position in the world.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Ray's gaze didn't hold hers as she approached him. It skittered, slid through her, unfocused at a distance on the other side of the wall through her, while he tried to weigh, in the impossibly short frame of the moment, if he'd made the right decision. He trusted his instincts, mostly, and regretted few of the choices he'd made, even when it didn't always work out. It wasn't that. It was just... If this all worked out, he would have done right by Oranda, no matter what she thought. As best as was possible, she would be set up for a future on her own terms, and a future that put her on the right side of the Ricks instead of living at the periphery and begging off their scraps.

But if something happened and he backed out now, Oranda was exposed. Was Quar the type to take it personally, and put the squeeze on Oranda since she had all the confirmation she needed now? His eyes flickered, almost looking up at her, but it was almost like there was a struggle for control behind the wheel, steering this way and that; in the end, his eyes didn't rise above her chest. "She can't know. My daughter. It has to be natural. If she knows it's because of me, she'll reject it. But I'm sure it's what she wants."

He turned away from Quar, nodding at her words. Trivial. Servile. Asset. Five years. He was looking at the military at one point; that still must have been worse. The military would have made a servile asset out of him, too, and wouldn't even have called him treasured. Hell, first thing off she was taking him on vacation.

At least, before everything else, he'd had a chance to speak his mind. That meant something, somehow. It was like he had put a pin in the real him, tacked it to the door there in the hospital room, and whoever it was that walked out with Quar just had to occupy his body for five years.

Except it was still him, and he was still the one listening to her prattle excitedly, and would be the one to be measured against the level of servility she expected. And, because it was him, he was hardly going to snap his fingers and turn into Wooster with white gloves and a tux. "Ghara." There was that sarcastic tone again, even if he didn't really intend it this time. He had to walk about fifty-percent faster than comfortable to keep up with her, even if Rick legs tended to proportionally shorter, but a good part of that was dodging her tail and catching up. "I haven't yet had the opportunity to catch up on all of Vern's instructional material. Today. Do you have anything you need of me today, or shall I go back to my work and make a point of education tonight? Will I still be managing flow management for the dome?"

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

“Hrn. That kind of daughter, eh?” Quar chuffed knowingly, looking at the eyes that would not look into hers, feeling the awkwardness but discarding it as unimportant – he was always dodgy that way. “She won't know, if this is what you want.” Then she was out the door.

“Return to your flow work today and for the future,” she said, not glancing aside at all as she went down the hall. “I am not a little prince needing to be doted on at all hours, so you will have plenty of time for the work you prefer. We leave for the Islands in two days. That should be sufficient time for you to review whatever material Vern has appointed.”

Quar's craft was parked on the hospital roof with Vern waiting in the cockpit. As the pair began to pass other Rriigkhans in the hall going to the elevators, Quar fell silent, but she began to talk again. as soon as the elevator doors dinged open and they emerged onto the lot cluttered mostly with the smaller personal craft belonging to Rriigkhan doctors and meditechs.

“I have not been to this park, but I know it is well-renowned for its faithful recreation of Ssaar. Parts of Ssaar, to clarify. The ringworld on which I was born recreated the climate of the continent Odja. It was colder than Montana and less mountainous. This air stinks.” She stopped abruptly, lifting her scrunched nose to glance around the sky as if she would be able to discover the source of the miasma. It was only ordinary city smog, not particularly bad compared to other parts of the world, but the hospital was also not enclosed in a dome. It was one of the few times in her life Quar had breathed the same air as the human masses. She shook her head and continued on.

Ray had been loaded onto her craft the first time via a cargo bay at the back because the large ramp made it easy to carry him in on the stretcher. Now Quar moved to the side door of her lounge behind the cockpit – it slid aside automatically and extended a ramp narrow enough to admit a single Rriigkhan.

Sectional couches deep enough to sleep on ran along either side of the cabin. Set apart from those, nearer the door, was a high-backed, white upholstered double chair scaled down for human comfort. The room was not totally symmetrical; a curving bulkhead divided one side of the back of the lounge into a toilet room. A semicircular countertop/kitchenette stood in the center of the space, complete with several chairs bolted to the floor, a sink, a small fridge and other appliances tucked under the counter, and nozzles for drink dispensing. The floor was largely a silvery metal with a dimpled texture for traction, though an irregularly shaped screen was also set in the floor. The screen flowed across the room like a river and branched into dead-end curlicues. Its thickness varied but was never broader than three feet at any given point. Currently this river-screen depicted copper flooring, but when the craft took to the air it would show the ground racing along below them – not really a window in the floor, but a good facsimile.

There were no true windows at all. Right now the only light was a cozy yellow glow from faux gas lanterns fixed to the curving, faux-stucco walls. Watered glass panes hid their artificiality.

She was communicating with Vern in AR as she climbed onto a couch opposite the human-sized seat, giving him the go-ahead to leave. Her couch had a backrest and she set herself against it, her torso twisted so that one arm rested atop the backrest and against the wall while most of her weight sat on one thigh. Her legs rested comfortably on the deep couch, knees together and slightly bent, while her tail draped over her ankles. She was still speaking, more at Ray than to him, her eyes drifting between his face and the ceiling as her attention drifted between present and past.

“I hunted wild luer with my age-mates in the Odjan forests. We had beautiful, extensive parks. Over a third of the livable surface area of the ringworld had been allotted to hunting grounds, and the game was very wild. It was there I met Frefuar...” She dropped her head to her shoulder, letting the edge of her crest clack against the wall. The end of her tail flicked once then lay still. Her gaze softened as it dropped, still watching a far-away place. Her hand not on the backrest smoothed down the material of her robe over her thigh, and then she was in the present again, watching Ray from her tilted head. “I think your people hunt and camp. Don't you?” Her stressing of the word made it obvious she meant Ray specifically, not humans in general.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

To some degree, Ray had been lost in a fog of thought. There wasn't so very much to think about, though he found himself struck by how quickly it had happened, and - in a peculiar way that he refused to label 'surreal' - how very little had actually changed to this moment where he found himself the 'personal servant' of a Rick.

Oranda was seen to now. The only thing she wanted more from him was never to see him again - she'd been clear about that. Hopefully that would change, but maybe this ...adjustment of assignment would help the time pass faster befoer hell froze over. Now he could focus on himself, though; what he needed to do, more than anything, was not lose himself. That meant no retreating into 'coasting', no taking anything for granted. Be present, be focused, and keep himself distinct from it all. Or at least the recruiter had given him advice pretty similar to that when she eroded all his arguments against signing with the ICG back in Minneapolis.

He was doing a poor job of that already, following along in a half-daze beside Quar. He tried to banish the fog, to really focus on what she was saying. When had they got on an elevator? Where had Vern been in all this?

He hadn't seen the smaller-sized chair on the flight in, but he hadn't really been looking, either. Was there always a human-sized chair? Was it the nwole seat? Had she only just had it added?

As the craft had not waited for him to find a seat before the door closed and it was lifting smoothly from the ground, not even pitching forward for the added thrust, but giving him less reason to check his balance or hold something than the mag-train to Chicago, Ray did not proceed sit. Instead, he went the little bar in the middle and rested a hand on the surface, which was only a few inches higher than his muscle memory expected it to be: not awkward, just off. "I mean to do this correctly," he started, as if she had every reason to expect otherwise. "So, is there anything you would like" - he motioned to the taps - "or would you prefer I wait for your request?"

“No, no,” she said briskly to his offer of a drink, lifting her fingers without raising the heel of her hand off her thigh to shake them no. That, at least, was universal body language, or maybe it was related to negative emotions being marked with right-to-left movements of the tail. “Wait for requests. The best servant knows his master well enough to anticipate her needs without being told, but until then, it is better to be unobtrusive.” Nevertheless, her tail thumped with pleasure that he was taking his role as seriously as she'd known he would.

"Also--" a quality had come into his voice, a bit choked, a bit subdued, as if there was more emotion there than he was willing to expose. "I've been ungrateful. The first thing I should have said when I woke up was, 'Thank you.' So - thank you for wisking me off here to get patched off. It wasn't necessary or required; I know that. So I appreciate that."

The subtle emotional tones in his voice now were new to Quar. She understood that it was different, but she did not understand what it might mean. Her mouth opened with a dozen flippant remarks ready to roll off her tongue, but then she closed it and stared hard at Ray instead. The truth was that she had panicked. The though of accidentally harming him terrified her. The muscles around her eyes tightened subtly; she saw Sam. The memory still hung in the periphery of her thoughts, so easy to access with the smallest nudge.

Ray was a valuable asset to her. A tool to be used. He was also a person who could feel gratitude. He had an inner life. Someday, he would cease to be. Quar's throat worked as she swallowed. She was not aware of the little dark seed growing in the back of her brain. Right now it was only a slight discomfort that faded as soon as she stopped thinking about these things.

“Yor wecome,” she said in English after a long pause, repeating the script she'd heard humans use with each other a hundred times. Then, in Cant, carefully measured, with a questioning tilt of her head: “I did no less than my duty. I wonder if you see this as a significant act of kindness because you view my people so poorly or if it is because a human in my position would not have done the same.”

An aspect of being a nwohl, Ray thought, was not antagonizing Quar by taking every bit of bait she laid in front of him. Maybe he was just using it as an excuse not to reply exactly why he didn't expect her to bring him herself, or why it mattered to him that she considered that a 'duty'. He simply nodded as though her answer was complete, even though the conversation rolled on in his mind with a zinger of a retort that almost certainly would have flopped rather than zinged if he actually said it.

It was a tell he wasn't actually aware of, the way he touched his lips, pinching them together when he'd decided not to say something, even though if he'd noticed it, it would have been baldly obvious. To him, it was simply leaning into that arm of the chair and wisely listening and agreeing.

Ray's lack of response to her question was illuminating, mystifying, and irritating to Quar all at once. She expressed the last with a belly-shaking blow of air through her nose before allowing the conversation to flow on. It hadn't been a gotcha question; she really wondered if a human in her position would have done the same. As she understood it, those with power in human societies thought they had no obligation to the castes ranked below them. (Classes, not castes. Different words for a very similar type of hierarchy.) She really did want to know if he thought of Rriigkhans as monsters, as so many humans must according to the news programs she sometimes watched. She filed away the scent that went along with that pursed-lip expression, although his emotions hadn't been strong enough in that moment to be highly notable.

The flyer was remarkably quiet, even by comparison to the relatively comfortable van he'd taken to the Ishpeming; even though Vern was about somewhere, it seemed as still and private a conversation as they'd had in her living room. (Actually, if Vern had been listening in before, it was probably equally as private.)

His comfortable chair opposite her didn't offer any kind of restraint, which meant that once he did sit, he spent a few moments twisting, looking at each hip and behind his shoulder in vain, before settling against one side and resting his arm long across the rest, so that if there was a sudden lurch he had something to hold onto. "I've been fishing plenty. Camping, too. My daughter was in Scouts, like I was - at least for awhile. But I'm too much of a city boy to have done any serious hunting. Don't ask me why it's more humane to hook a fish and toss it back than it is to pelt a squirrel with a BB, but that's the way it was in my family when I was a kid, and my daughter didn't have much interest in shooting at anything.”

Much of what Ray said about himself only made a half-sense to Quar, like listening to a fantasy story. Scouts, BBs... she didn't know these things but also did not care enough to ask him to clarify. With her head on her shoulder her gaze wandered while he spoke, waiting for her turn to speak at length because she was more interested in herself.

"Growing up on a ring world must be a big adjustment to here. I've seen pictures." And who is Frefuar? he specifically didn't ask. The way that name grabbed her by the horns and turned her train of thought suggested it might significant - maybe a Rick he should already know? Good friend, probably. Someone she'd moved away from when she came to Earth. Maybe she'd go back to visit her? Fuck, what if she left Earth? Would he have to go with her? The thought alarmed him - was that even allowed? Probably not, but he was getting swept up in his own thoughts again; he needed to focus on her. He'd wait until she said the name again, ask about it then. Beside, the way she said it used those Rick sounds in the side of her mouth he wasn't sure he could replicate without more practice.

That tiny nip of human panic reached her and Quar lifted her head again to look at him more directly.

“You are afraid. Why?” she asked, totally ignoring his most recent statement. Her ears lifted slightly to train on him before dropping to a more relaxed position.

"Afraid?" The question startled him - it was as though she'd asked him why he was wearing polka-dotted underwear (if in fact he had been wearing any.) "No? That's--" It had already clicked why she was asking, but his thoughts required a bit more time to realize that unlike with humans, where it was polite to deny any negative emotion, he might as well be denying something as obvious as the color of the sky. "It's not fear, exactly. More... surprise?" Surprise was further from the truth, but it fit the emotion he would like it to be a bit more closely. "I had just thought that I didn't know if you left the planet. For vacation, say, or to visit your family. Maybe Phhrephhuar? She is your friend?" So much for waiting until Quar mentioned her again. "I didn't know if that meant I would be coming along. That would be a large adjustment. But I'm not afraid, and I wouldn't back out because of it."

Again, not exactly true. Space was the place where they couldn't hear you scream. Worse, space was the place where your stomach constantly felt that worst part of the roller-coaster rides, and where you could get trapped in the middle of a room with no way to reach any of the walls, as unlikely as it was. Space was the place where a meteorite the size of a grain of sand could blast right through you like a bullet, and that was if you survived all the loose radiation floating around.

A lot of the younger Flow Management trainees took the course specifically because the mining operations around the gas giants needed flow managers worse than any occupation but actual null-g miners, but Ray was quite satisfied with both feet on the ground, thank you.

"Besides, travelling to Ssaar-on-Earth to hunt a rock-thing is probably every bit as exotic."

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The moment he mentioned leaving the planet, Quar abruptly sat upright, hips rotating so she sat on her buttocks rather than her thigh, her arm yanking from the backrest to tap her fist with restrained irritation down on the cushion. Her tail was flung aside.

“Kkkesh!” The quiet oath began as a rolling, creaky growl and ended with a rush of air from the cheeks. It was not directed at Ray. In fact she was looking past him at the wall in a thoughtful way. “I don't know if I am 'allowed' to take you off-world. There are so many stupid little rules concerning humans...” The stupid little rules were demonstrated by a waggling of her fingers as she motioned with her hand moving parallel to the floor and out from her chest before they curled into a loose fist again and dropped onto her lap. “I will have to check.”

She already had the ICG website open in a corner of her vision so she was slightly distracted from the rest of what he said, otherwise she would have guffawed at his butchering of Frefuar's name. Her eyes moved from side to side, unfocused on him, because she was reading – humans cannot leave the solar system unless they renounce their citizenship and become a Haukagh bondsman. Property of a Tsarkeh, as humans would see it.

“Frefuar was the first husband I took,” she said distantly and without emotion, still reading. She closed out of the page and refocused on Ray. “You are nervous, but need not be. I cannot take you out of this system.” She said that with little emotion, too, because it did not matter very much to her. By the time she was bored of Earth Ray would probably be dead.

She leaned back with her hands laced behind her head, legs “stretched out” in front of herself, bent at the knees so that her long heels made contact with the cushion while her calves did not. Her skirt was split into three loose panels to allow easy movement of her legs and tail. When she'd shifted earlier, the draping of the front panel over her groin outlined the swell of her teats. By humans standards they were not impressive on such a large body, no bigger than tennis balls and with a tuberous shape.

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"Ah. Well, there is that to be said for stupid little rules, then. Flying out to your dome doubled the distance I'd traveled over my life, more or less. For my family, I'm widely traveled now. Leaving the planet... that would be something. Though it would be interesting to hear about, sometime, if you feel like describing it."

The stability of the flight made it easy to forget that they were moving, much less how fast or how high. After a few minutes his body had negotiated the grip on the arm of the chair down to a more casually-draped arm, which in turn allowed him to cross his legs, lifting his right so the ankle sat behind his knee. It was relaxed, more than just looking relaxed, but the nervousness that clung to Ray persisted; then again, it tended to build on him through nearly all of his interactions with Quar so far, as more time spent compounded the possibility of a significant misstep.

"Interesting. You were married, too. What's that like, for Rriigkhan? Your friends at the tent - they were married? I've read that the women sometimes take multiple men; that would be really unusual for humans. Actually, while I'm asking nosy questions, there's a big one. Don't laught at me for asking now, but what exactly is a nwohl. I get the general idea, but... sort of exactly. It's not like Vern, right? He's not a nwohl."

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“Hrn,” Quar said, thoughtfully clacking her back teeth together while she tilted her muzzle up to consider the ceiling. She latched readily onto the opportunity to talk about herself to someone who would no doubt find her fascinating, if he'd never left the continent of his birth. How small his world was! It was almost incomprehensible to be so poor. “Living on a ringworld is not so different from a planet. Centrifugal force provides an artificial gravity..“ Her eyes dropped to his, brows furrowing. “...That means the people inside stick to the ground because the ring is spinning. Now,” her gaze returned to the faraway place. “It is like living at the base of a mountain, but the mountain stretches up and up overhead forever, and the great spokes of the wheel tower up into the mists.” A hand came out from behind her head to stretch out and up, the loose bell sleeve falling down to her elbow. “The land splits the sky at either side of you. On very clear days you can see snatches of land and glittering lakes above your head, but often it is obscured by clouds. It is disorienting to stand on a planet when you grow up in such a place. Some develop phobias of falling into the sky. I am used to it now. I prefer it now. The sky of Earth is similar to what my ancestors would know.” She tucked the hand behind her head again and began to rock one of her legs back and forth while she spoke, pivoting on her heel where it made contact with the couch.

“On Earth you divide your natural places and your living places into two distinct categories. On Yaughnarr-krith the buildings are far apart, with parks between them. Infrastructure is built into the rim and the spokes of the wheel, so there are few roads to mar the beauty, and all the manufacturing takes place in the rim as well. You asked earlier if hunting is important to all Rriigkhans. I say no, perhaps not. We have our 'city boys'. On Yaughnarr-krith it was very much a part of the culture, and integrated with other types of education.

“When I was 17, I was taken on my first mixed-gender hunt... To clarify, the first since early childhood. The first time it mattered, you understand? I knew Frefuar previously, and in fact avoided him for the petty reason that our names were similar, but seeing how he worked with his hunt-brothers to flush dejirs out of the brush for us women to spear impressed me...”

Her words had gradually taken on a dreamy quality as her gaze softened, lids dropping subtly. All this time her tail curled and uncurled against the cushion where it lay stretched away from her body, slowly, contemplatively. She unlaced her hands from behind her head and let them drop into her lap. Her eyes moved to focus on Ray and she was in the present again.

“You are right. We have as many husbands as we can love. Ghijariis has one; the other male is their bedmate. It is not so unusual for a woman to have three or four husbands. I made a vow of monogamy to Frefuar.” She chuffed, brows lifting in incredulity at her own youthful naivety. The knowing way she pinned her gaze on Ray seemed to say, Can you believe that shit!? “My heart ached with how much love it held for him. I thought it would be impossible to feel that way for anyone else for as long as I lived.... “ Her voice became quieter as she trailed off, turning her face aside to gaze at the floor while the movements of her tail stilled. Her fingers curled inward, lightly squeezing then letting go. She was right; she had never felt that way again. But it was because he was her first love, not because he was her greatest. Now that memory of love was an ache buried beneath countless other aches.

His next question pulled her back and she lifted her head again.

“Vern is of the wrong caste for the term to apply. A nwohl is a general-purpose assistant. It is a very broad term because it depends on the desires of the master. I think, in your language, the word is...” Quar squinted. She was already googling a translation and trying to figure out how to say this word. “'Fhutler.”

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Letting her talk at length without interrupting (or rather, insisting that he himself listen), Ray watched her instead. When his fingers had come off his lips, it was because his chin shifted into the cradle of his palm. Idly, his fingers stroked under the the still-smooth chin from depillation - he'd get a good couple of months of smoothness that way before he'd have to start supplementing, and then eventually get the hair removed again. It was a common enough procedure among men and women both, and suited the tight hairline he liked to keep, too, but it had started because Michelle used his body as a canvas. Going back to letting his body hair grow through the tattoo had been a conscious choice, like applying sealant to an unfinished painting.

There were pictures, educational videos and the like of these ringworlds. Science fiction from before the Advent depicted them, too, either too bright and hopeful, or too dreadfully dystopian in the manner of most fiction. The mundane reality of Rick habitats sucked some of the wonder out of them, he thought. Yes, they were clean and maintained and free of evolved nuisances like mosquitos, but the fact that they already existed, that someone else already had them was...

There wasn't a good word for it, really, without admitting it was just sour grapes. Ray - on behalf of humanity - was jealous. Even if the idea of living in some enclosed circle where your sky was the top of someone else's house instead the vastness of space didn't appeal to him, it burned that Quar could experience these things so casually, when he and Michelle hadn't ever even saved up enough for the down payment on a condo. They did, at least, own that old camper truck. That was something. He'd loved that thing.

"I read once that because it is the centrifugal effect holding you to the ring, and not gravity, that flying sports are easier. Running and jumping might be enough to lift off, and then you are weightless, at the mercy of air currents? Crashing to the ground is less like falling, and more like hitting a moving mag-train. A little flyer like the one back at your property is probably a bit of crazy fun on a ring. But I wonder if the animals ever launch themselves? A stampede of luers tumbling into the sky instead of into a ravine."

Flying was a safe dream, because it was something he'd never do. It was the sort of wish-list item that he could toss into casual conversation and get excited about, while making absolutely no effort to pursue; possibly, not even to grab if the opportunity presented itself to him. He'd imagined himself a bit reckless in his youth and made all sorts of vague plans to go skydiving and gliding, but kids were expensive, and came with a weighty sense of responsibility.

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“On Yaughnarr-krith a Rriigkhan and most animals would not be able to jump high enough unassisted to lift off, but some sports used ramps... or cliffs...” Quar's eyes lit with a memory she'd thought buried for a lifetime and she sat up straighter, folding her legs in so that the bottoms of her paws smushed together. She rocked forward to grab her own toes, tail softly whump-whumping on the cushion.

“When I was small, us children would launch ourselves off a cliff overlooking the woods, jumping against the spin. The goal is to snag a tree coming down.. the poor trees were all smashed up around there.. but missing, hitting the ground would mean broken bones and a trip to the medic... He would scold us so mightily! We called him Ghara because of it.” The force of her own dry, chuffing laughs rocked her back against the couch until they died out and she sat forward again. She looked from her memories to Ray, dipping her crest in a tiny shrug. “I suppose we were at risk of breaking our necks. We did this over water when adults had their say.”

Ray imagined it like it was a movie: an idyllic scene of little Quar and a bunch of other little Quars in various Rick colors leaping from a cliff - whatever that amounted to in an engineered world - and arms and limbs windmilling through what must have looked like some kind of strangely-arcing superhero leap into the landscape that came spinning around toward them. He was never great at high school math or physics, but he tried to work out how hard they must have hit the trees - it wasn't like falling, since there wasn't an acceleration of gravity, but it was probably still an awful lot like jumping at a brick wall for the fun of it.

In his mind, the scene was late summer, in washed out watercolor tones as a concept artist might have drawn it, or an architect trying to sell the idea of the ring to young Rick families who might be swayed by the idea of their kits playing. It was the same way he might have pictured a tire-swing hanging out over a lake with teens launching themselves out over the water, never mind that he had his own experience with tire swings and the gunk they collected inside the rim, how uncomfortable they were, and what an unseen fallen log beneath the water could do to an unprepared landing. Memories had a way of glossing over the worst times in favor of vignetting the best.

"Kids seem to need to find a way to risk breaking their necks. We did when I was young. My daughter..." Well, she didn't have nearly as much opportunity to get into trouble as she probably should have, which explained a lot about her.

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Quar wondered how many other memories were locked away behind the ages... Why had she thought of Frefaur, anyhow? So I can be maudlin later. That was her way, conjure up things to feel sad about. But now she felt at ease. She was getting what she'd wanted, both from Ray and the world at large.

"What happened with him. With Phrephuar? Is that okay to ask about, or too private?"

How curious it was to think of Quar already married and divorced, to talk about love that made the heart ache. Ray didn't go in for soap operas and the like, but mostly because he knew how easily he could get sucked in. So Quar had an emotional life - a love life. It was a little hard to picture, the way they presented themselves, but at least intellectually he could imagine it, just as he could imagine stone statues of Greek philosophers loved and loving... sort of.

Somewhere along the line he'd shifted to lean forward, toward the edge of his seat; both of his arms hung over his knees now, hands dangling and fingers idly strumming at each other. His brows furrowed together with curiosity. So the reversal of momentum and the slight touch as the transport settled back down to the ground at the end of its flight surprised him, gentle though it was.

“Nothing happened. Scents blow away in the wind. It is an unhappy truth,” Quar said with disinterest. Her perception of humans was that men and women did not really like each other very much. Much of their comedy derived from one sex putting down the other. They mated often because of their instinctual urges but rarely married. She was not sure Ray would be able to understand the complexities of Rriigkhan relationships or identify with those deep feelings of love, and anyway it wasn't something she wanted to dig into just now. She was in the mood to be ENTHUSED!

She was on her paws the moment the craft began to lower, bouncing on her pads with her tail raised in an arc, almost a loose curl, behind herself. Her attention was trained on the screen set in the floor which showed the pulsing colors of her dome, then the grass rushing up at them. When the image of copper flooring replaced the feed she would know it was safe to open the door.

Quar’s feet were already propelling her to the door beside Ray's seat when he asked a final question.

“How many castes are there, anyway?  Are all your friends Tsarkehs, too? Ghiijaris, and her two men?"

She was not looking at him, but past him as he rose to open the door for her, already thinking about what she was going to do next – mainly, be busy making plans with Ghijariis and her other guests, then dealing with whatever fallout came from that nasty business earlier. The Antlic Islands would surely make reparations to her over the horrible behavior of their employee. Vern had brought the ship down near the stables so she could already see her house through the portal.

Unthinkingly, her right hand lifted toward Ray as she passed him – the fingers splaying, the curved hooks of her claws languidly extending from the slits of her broad fingertips.

“Chatty thing! Of course they are Tsarkehs. I wouldn't mix scents with the sediment.” The lightness in those words, the playful lift of her tail and her quick bouncing gait all served to illustrate that she was joking. Her hand came down on the top of his head to lightly touch him. The fingers curled just enough over his scalp that her clawtips brushed him without digging in, just enough that he would feel pressure from her pads, and then she was out the ramp without looking back, without waiting or instructing.

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"Hm." His gaze was on that stripe in the floor, not studying it or even seeing it so much as just entranced by the movement, until his eyes snapped up at her again. "That makes sense. When you can live as long as you want, right? Marriage for life makes a lot more sense when there's only forty or fifty years of it." Now he focused on her, especially as she rose, eyes flicking over her movements. It was mostly subconscious, the way he'd watch any movement: tracking her, setting baselines, getting a sense for her personality and how it manifested in her body-language. She was as animated as she had been before her war games. Because of him? Of winning that little contest of wills, if it had even been that? No; it had slipped his mind at the hospital, but as the door opened he recalled the flyer, and how excited that had made her, and realized she was thinking ahead to that vacation-hunt for huge bugs. Fantastic.

That little light touch reset him. A shiver shot up his spine, and not the bad kind, either. It replayed through his mind as he went back about his job, checking in with Rylee to see that the garden was planted, and then realizing he'd gotten himself caught in the midst of an impromptu gathering of contractors who he had to explain several times that he was fine, and he didn't really remember the operation that much, but he was fine now, and sure, he'd like to hear more about what happened with the thief, but later. Later. Sure, he'd tell more about the hospital later. Yes, he'd ridden back with Quar - he could talk about later, maybe over dinner. Oh, Rylee - don't go, I need to tell you something later, but by the time he thought to tell her that she was off to other work. He didn't end up telling anyone about becoming Quar's nwohl. Not yet. Later was a good time.

That little light touch. How long had it been since someone touched him - like that. Like anything. Not a handshake, or a bump on the arm, or a jostle on the train, but playfully invasive of his personal space, like that personal space belonged to them, too. He hadn't realized that he wanted it, really. He would have said the need for it had atrophied after the funeral, after the fallout with Oranda - and obviously, he would have been wrong. That that it was a paw rather than a hand, claws rather than fingertips made surprisingly little difference. He didn't even remember to turn on his music while he was busy roughing out that new pipe under the eaves of the stables for the mister lower down on his to-do list. He was too busy thinking about the way Quar had lounged in the transport, the way she laid out when he was brushing her. What would Frufuar have seen in that? To him, she was a Rick, another species, right? One wasn't seduced by a lioness lounging in the zoo. But she wasn't an animal, even with fur and claws, and that made a difference. There was Rick porn available on the internet - porn that humans watched, whoever it was intended for - a bit of browsing away. Maybe that would help him understand Quar a little more.

And maybe his thoughts were burrowing down a rabbit hole he shouldn't even be acknowledging, much less exploring.

This whole nwohl business was going to be more complicated than he'd imagined in the instant he'd considered it before agreeing that morning.