Whatever I wished to know. I could ask him questions for
hours. Who cared about food? I wished I had a recording device. Notes. I needed
to take notes. How else could I organize my thoughts or remember everything
Garjah told me?
Garjah settled a plate in front of me. It held fairly
standard looking protein cubes and some feathery purple stalks. “What are
these?” I asked.
“They are safe. Timok had Andulsa program in a human-safe
section to the food reproducer. These are your protein cubes, and this is selari
blooms from a planet in your sector.”
Not a planet I’d ever visited. “Just because it’s in our
sector and humans occupy or visit doesn’t mean the food is safe. Humans adapt
but we also avoid.”
“Timok did the research. It is safe.” Garjah settled in
front of his own plate, easily twice the size of mine, filled with thick slabs
of meat. Real meat, not protein. The seared stench reminded me of a fire I’d
once rescued a queme—a small furred mammal that burrowed in woody bushes that
grew in tangles on Plensen IX. The rest of its colony hadn’t made it.
“Thank you for not serving me that.” I watched in distaste
as he picked up a chunk, bit off a bite and swallowed it whole.
“I am not ignorant,” Garjah mumbled. “Timok does not eat
meat either.”
Huh. Another commonality with these alien people. It was
hard to study animals, to learn everything about them, love them, and reconcile
eating them when perfectly acceptable protein cubes were available. They could
even be made to mimic meat textures and tastes, should I wish to be discreet in
my avoidance of eating local delicacies. Deciding to show my trust by accepting
the meal was safe, I speared a bite with the knife provided. That and a pair of
tongs were the only utensils provided.
“Have you ever heard of a fork?” I asked. Not the most
pressing of questions, but one that might allow me to eat without slicing the
side of my mouth or stabbing my tongue.
Garjah’s tilted his smooth green head. He kept eating with
one set of his hands, and the other rested on the top of the table. “What is a
fork?” he asked between bites.
I explained it to him between bites as he kept encouraging
me to eat, watching in fascination as I chewed the protein cubes and cut up the
stalks of the selari and gingerly picked them up with the tongs. “Do you only
eat meat?” I asked when he said he would try to get a fork replicated for me. He’d
already eaten half the thick chunks of flesh.
“No, but when we have fresh supplies, everyone takes
advantage.”
Fresh supplies. Was that why they were on Ardra? A supply
run? “What supplies?”
“Food. Water. Oslium mineral.”
My eyes flared wide. “Oslium?” I must have heard him wrong.
That was one of the most precious minerals in the known universe, and of
course, one of the rarest. “There is no oslium on Ardra.” There was no way the
planet wouldn’t have been made Priority One with an entire fleet of mining
ships with a military escort surrounding it.
“Your technology is limited.” Garjah gestured with one hand,
a lower arm shrug which looked strange. “You use inferior metals, which I
assume is due to a lack of detection and processing ability.”
He was talking about my suit again. “We are not some
backward society.”
“Of course not.” Garjah shook his head. “But we have a much
longer history and have been traveling space for far longer than humans have.
Most of the cultures in your Allied space are young.”
“Young?” I goggled at him. “We have been exploring space for
thousands of years. The Aeneom have been for longer than humans have a recorded
history.”
“And we have been exploring space for far longer.” Garjah
did the shrug again. “We have learned to avoid young races, but you are quite
prolific and adaptable, Timok says.”
He repeated what Timok said a lot. I narrowed my eyes. “Do
you spend a lot of time with Timok?” I asked.
“As much as anyone.” Garjah tilted his head back and
swallowed his last bite. He used his tongue—long and thin, pale green like the
lighter stripes on his skin—to clean the juices off the hands he’d used to eat.
He swiped along each finger, and his tongue literally curled around each one.
I clenched the knife in my hand, then put it down carefully.
Garjah blinked his large eyes. They seemed oversized,
beautiful and liquid, set over narrow nostrils with a tiny bridged nose and
thin lips that just covered his sharp teeth. He had high cheekbones and a
triangular jaw that had flared wide when he opened his mouth to chomp through
the meat. He’d watched my every move since he came into my room, frequently
glancing at me even when he was getting us food.
“What?” I asked.
“Are you done?”
Half my plate was still full, but my stomach churned. I
nodded, then remembered that might not mean anything to him. “Yes.”
He stacked my plate on his. “Come.”
It was a struggle to stand but pushing on the tabletop
helped. The gravity on this ship felt even higher than Ardra’s, and the extra
weight made it hard to do anything. “Are we going back to my room?” I didn’t
have the energy for anything else.
“Don’t you want to go see the cerops?”
“I can see Bouncer?” My heart jumped. “Yes! I want to see
him.” I took a step and my knees buckled.
Garjah jumped forward, catching me with two hands under my
armpits with my knees barely an inch above the floor.
“I’m fine!” I insisted. Would he refuse to take me now?
“You are not. I will carry you.”
I could argue, or I could go see Bouncer. I didn’t argue.
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