by H. E. Trent
“I, uh…understand that lots of people around here have been having trouble with trespassers and similar nuisances.”
Lisa, a Terran woman and daughter of an early settler, snorted loudly and switched her nursing son to her other breast. “We had to electrify our fence to keep folks from posting notices on it. You know how much energy that takes?”
Her husband—or rather, one of them—a timid, fair-haired Jekhan man who always seemed to be looking a thousand miles away, made the quietest hissing sound.
Yikes.
Erin knew that noise all too well. She needed to watch out for that guy.
“Uh. A lot, I take it?”
“We can’t keep up with the fuel demand. With all the rain we’ve had lately, the solar panels are totally tapped out, and we’re running low on that stabilized rocket fuel we got to power the generator on. Thank you for that by the way, Owen.”
Erin looked back at her brother. “Where the hell did you get rocket fuel?”
“Junk hauler who came through Little Gitano a few weeks ago let me pick through some stuff he had in his truck. There was a fuel tank.” He shrugged. “The fuel was mostly kerosene, anyway.”
“I see,” she said, deadpan. At times, Erin wasn’t even sure who her brother was anymore. Rocket fuel and bomb chemicals?
He and their brother Michael had always been autodidacts, but Michael’s preferred educational topics had been history and art. He’d used that knowledge and his ability to ferret out obscure information every day as a tutor. Owen’s interests had diverged early on—likely from the time he was six and started hanging out at the garage where their father worked.
She needed to have a talk with her brother. She didn’t know where his brain was and didn’t like that. McGarrys were supposed to be close…in spite of their rare compulsions to smack each other into the next level of hell.
“After this, let’s—”
“Here, hold him.” A young Jekhan woman named Kelta plopped her toddler onto Erin’s lap and sidled over to the snack table.
The kid was like a sack of bricks on Erin’s thigh, and seemed to take great pleasure out of her groan of distress.
Jeez.
“Um. Okay, then. I guess I can just tell you all what I had in mind. I know you’re not used to drawing things up formally and filing away a bunch of papers. I guess Jekhans aren’t as bureaucratic as we Terrans.”
“Generally too laidback.” Amy peered into her compact mirror and dabbed a bit more ivory powder onto her chin.
Why she was bothering to go back undercover in her human paint job, Erin didn’t know. Almost everyone in Little Gitano knew who Amy was.
Maybe the makeup is just a costume she needs to put on so she can get out the door.
If so, Erin didn’t see where she could criticize. At least Amy was out, which was more than she’d been doing even two weeks prior.
She was trying. Erin could at least do that much, too.
On with it, then.
“I’m not trying to come in here and tell you how to run your lives. I’m an outsider, but I know the issues Trigrian has been having, and I know that my sister’s name being on those posts doesn’t do a heap of good if folks want the land bad enough. They know there are no real consequences for attempted theft, so they keep trying.”
“Jekhans don’t steal,” Geno said.
If not for the kid’s permanently flushed cheeks and the reddish tinge to his short blond hair, Erin would have thought Geno was pure human. He looked just like Allan, down to the way he held his shoulders a bit too close to his ears when he wasn’t paying attention.
There’d probably be no trace of Jekh at all in his children’s appearances.
Erin pinched the bridge of her nose and the papers on her lap blurred.
Fuck.
Amy nudged her foot. “They’re all looking at you,” she whispered. “They’re rapt. Tell them stuff.”
Erin took a deep breath, and committed to soldiering on. “Yes, Geno, I know. Jekhans can’t rest if things aren’t fair.” She looked at no one in particular, just straight ahead and between the apparent owner of the sheep-goat ranch and his much-younger Terran wife. Erin had learned just that morning that the animals were actually hybrid animals and a parting gift of the Tyneali.
“I guess what this comes down to is that there need to be a few local ordinances, and for them to be enforced. Once those are in place, people will decide that the consequences of their bad behavior aren’t worth the potential profit.” She shuffled her papers one-handedly and bobbed the squirmy toddler on her knee. She was looking for the list Court had helped her make earlier.
“Love you,” the kid said.
She couldn’t help but to laugh. “Raise your standards, kiddo.”
“He really does.” Kelta knocked some crumbs off the table and glanced over her shoulder. “Talks about you all the time.”
“Say what?”
He put his head on Erin’s shoulder and his thumb into his mouth.
Amy snickered. “Everyone loves when Missy Erin works at the nursery on market day.”
“I do that, like, twice per month for an hour at a time. I’m barely a blip on their radars.”
Amy bobbed her brows and put her compact away. “If you say so.”
“You know something I don’t?”
“Oh, come on. Everyone knows you. You’re a legendary figure.”
“What, the McGarry with the mop handle?”
“Other stuff, too,” Allan said with a chuckle.
She sighed. She wanted the ordeal over and done with, so she turned her attention back to the semicircle.
To the room, she said, “You need people to decide what the laws are, people to execute the laws, and people to decide how to punish folks who break them. Some smart folks back on Earth figured out a lot of years ago that you have to divide up the power so you don’t foster tyrants. Now, you don’t necessarily need a lot of people getting involved. This is just a stopgap measure to improve safety on your properties.”
“What do we do to get started?” the doctor asked.
“I…” Erin shook her head. “I mean, I didn’t exactly plan that far out. I assumed you folks would rally up, talk, and then get something happening.”
“Why wait?”
“Because…you need to sort of…pick folks to do this… Um.” Erin made a mental commitment to rambling less. “You’ll need time to query the other folks who live around here. See what they think and what they want.”
“You need to understand how Jekhan government tends to work,” Amy said. “When there are issues, the people form a consensus before there are any structured meetings. They do all their talking and arguing off the record.”
“But I’m just now broaching the topic,” Erin whispered.
“You can be certain Allan sparked the discussion right after Trigrian messaged him about your idea.”
“Two days ago?”
“Doesn’t take long for word to get around in a town this size. They already got the volunteer peacekeepers to agree to police the rule breakers, should there be any, and the doctor has agreed to act as judiciary once there’s a written set of statutes.”
“So why am I here?”
“Because someone needs to come up with the statutes.” Allan grinned.
Obviously, Erin’s whispers hadn’t been anywhere near quiet enough.
Too many people were looking at her, and she didn’t like the way they were looking. They looked at her the same way Mimi did when someone needed to scrub out the pots and pans after Thanksgiving dinner, and that someone could only be Erin.
“Oh no. No, no, no.” She handed her stack of papers over to Amy and set the kid on his feet in front of her. “Listen, I just figured you’d have a little office in town where all the plots were recorded. I didn’t intend for this to turn into some permanent thing that needed a bunch of structure. You didn’t need that.”
“No, we didn’t need that before,” the shee
p-goat guy said. “But times have changed. If we’re going to beat the Terrans at their own game, we need a Terran to tell us how to play it.”
“Me? No way. There are plenty of other Terrans around here who could take on the mantle for something like this. Hell, Allan’s right here, and other ex-soldiers, too. They’d be perfect for a gig like that, and they’re fixtures here. They know Little Gitano inside and out. I just stumbled into this place six months ago, following my sister into trouble as always.”
“They’ve already decided they want a McGarry to do it,” Allan said. “Can you blame them?”
“Hell yes, I can. And if you want a McGarry, get Courtney. She’s knitted into the place through Trigrian. She’s not going any-damn-where.”
“She’s too busy,” sheep-goat guy’s wife said.
“And I’m not, I guess,” Erin muttered.
“You’ll have to excuse Polly,” Allan said. “She doesn’t think anyone’s busy unless they’ve got a couple of kids hanging off their”—he covered Geno’s ears—“tits.”
Erin groaned. “Get Owen, then. He’s got a better brain for that kind of technical stuff.”
And fewer moral hang-ups, apparently.
“I didn’t come to Jekh for that,” Owen said flatly.
“Yeah? What did you come here for, then, other than to hole up in your little shack twisting wires together and to hide from people?”
“Erin,” he said in a tone that dripped with warning.
“Why did you really come to Jekh?”
“This isn’t about me.”
“No, obviously this is about me getting ganged up on and voted into a position I never explicitly expressed interest in.”
“But you’re qualified,” Amy said.
“How? How am I qualified for this? McGarrys don’t make laws. We tiptoe around some and outright break the stupid ones.”
“We need your opinions,” the doctor said. “You could call yourself…a consultant, if that makes you feel any better. Just for a little while until the Jekhans around here feel confident enough to step back out. But in the meantime, we need someone to be that face. That law-maker.”
Erin scoffed and put her hands out in the universal gesture for “Nope.”
“You’ve got the wrong girl. All I did was suggest the teensiest bit of bureaucracy. I don’t want to change your town. That is not why I’m here. I’m here for Courtney and Kerry. I don’t want this.”
“And that’s exactly why we want you,” Kelta said. She held a Jekhan pastry so familiar in its artistry, and there could only be one baker around with that sort of skill.
Erin pinched the bridge of her nose.
Can’t even escape him in town.
“You’re not wriggling out of this one,” Allan whispered from beside her. There wasn’t a bit of humor to be found in his tone, and she’d never heard him so serious.
She met his icy gaze, and cringed.
“You gonna stay put?” he asked.
Yet again, she glanced around the waiting semicircle of locals, and gulped. They were all still watching. Still so hopeful.
I’m so fucked.
She shielded her lips with her stack of papers to whisper back, “I didn’t plan on leaving. Not as long as Courtney’s here.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“I don’t want to obstruct. I didn’t come here for that.”
“Neither did I.” He knelt, gave the toddler a little scoot on the caboose that got him moving, and whispered, “After I got to Jekh and my unit splintered, I wanted to be on the first ship out of this place.”
“But?”
“Some asshole gave me a job, and I guess I forgot I wasn’t supposed to be here. A year later I married his daughter.”
The assembly was all still looking at her, so she leaned in closer, putting her lips right to Allan’s ear. “How do you deal with the guilt? From staying, I mean.”
“The guilt? I go home to my beautiful wife and my kids, and I remember that she picked me. Not the other way around.”
“Her choice.”
“And she had plenty of options. Trust me.”
“Thanks.”
“Yep.” He squeezed her shoulder and headed toward the snacks.
She sighed, and muttered, “Fuck,” under her breath.
Headron and Esteben had made her their choice. That should have been enough, but the fear that she was doing the wrong thing was so hard to abandon.
Sometimes, fear was easier than faith.
___
After two days of assuming that Erin was avoiding him—again—Esteben finally found her outside in a copse of fruit trees.
She leaned on her staff, staring into the fields toward nothing in particular and looking like an agricultural goddess with streaks of dirt on her cheeks and bushels of ripe fruit in baskets around her.
“I decided that you’ve been hiding from me again.”
“Shit,” she whispered. She clutched her chest and straightened her posture a bit. “Didn’t hear you come up.”
“The ground is still quite soft. The grass has more spring than is typical.” He set his bag at the base of a tree and gestured for her to join him.
She eyed him with her usual amount of suspicion, but after a minute—and a sigh—she joined him on the blanket she’d evidently spread earlier. She set her staff down beside her and flopped back, closing her eyes. “I haven’t been hiding. I was in Little Gitano until this morning. I stayed with Kelta. Court picked me up a couple of hours ago.”
“And you came straight to the fields?”
“I needed to keep my hands busy so I didn’t think too much.”
“What has you in such an agitated state? What happened in Little Gitano?”
“There was a meeting. I didn’t think things would happen so quickly, but it looks like there’s going to be a barebones government in town soon. They’re meeting again tomorrow to start discussing jurisdictional boundaries and administrative procedures.”
“They?”
She grimaced. “Me included, I guess. I’d hoped to be able to drop the idea on someone’s lap and run, but they wouldn’t let me. I even tried to throw Court’s name at them, but they pushed back saying she’s too busy with Kerry and the new pregnancy and the farm, and that I was the better candidate to help people residing in this area.”
He shook his head. “I don’t understand why you don’t see that as good news.” Working in government, Erin would be a woman of some status—a perfect match for a Beshni. Not that being a Beshni meant much anymore.
“Of course you don’t,” she said.
“And now I don’t understand the hostility behind your tone.”
Sighing, she opened her bloodshot eyes. “Listen, don’t worry about it. Do you have food in that bag? I don’t think I could stomach any more of this fruit.”
“No food. I happened upon you on the way back from a meeting with a trader and old friend who was passing through. I’m here solely due to serendipity.”
“I guess I should go get something to eat, then.”
“Is something bothering you?”
“No. Why do you ask?”
“Because you’re being evasive. That’s not a McGarry trait.”
“So you’ve figured us out in the time you’ve been locked up in the main house with us, huh? I guess that’s not hard.”
“I do my best to understand you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re easier to handle that way.”
“Okay.” She scoffed and reached for her staff. “See you later.”
He had a longer reach and stronger will, so he got the staff out of her grip and her body against his before she could make a valiant attempt to stand. “I walked over to this copse to speak with you,” he whispered into her hair. “The least you can do is give me five minutes of words.”
“I don’t owe you anything.”
“Don’t you?” He slid hand down the front of her cargo pants and met
no resistance whatsoever. She didn’t squirm. Didn’t run. Didn’t bat his arm away. All she did was sucked her stomach in, giving him even more room to play.
The elusive Miss McGarry made a habit of saying things she didn’t mean. He’d always been very good at games. He’d simply needed time to realize they were in the midst of one.
He circled his middle finger around her clit and tugged her earlobe between his teeth, letting it snap. “I thought we were coming to an understanding,” he said. “You, me, and Headron.”
“I’m sure you and Headron were doing a lot of so-called understanding while I was gone.”
“If you’re insinuating we’ve fucked, you may as well be candid. I’ll give you the answer you seek.”
He dipped a finger, and then another, into her wet hole, and smiled at the sharp expulsion of air she expended.
Definitely not a sigh. There was nothing resigned about her submission. She wanted him in control, wanted to be touched.
“I don’t care if you did,” she said.
“I don’t believe you. I believe you’re just as jealous and possessive as I am, and you don’t want to think about any sharing that occurs when you’re not around to oversee it.”
“I really don’t care, Esteben.”
“Again, I don’t believe you.” He swirled his fingers inside her, dipping and thrusting first slowly than rapidly, building up speed so quickly she didn’t have time to catch her breath—so quickly that she didn’t have time to school her body into going stiff and unreceptive against him.
She was limp and panting, clawing at his arm and clamping his top leg beneath hers, giving him more room to maneuver between her thighs.
She came like that, fast and loud—swearing at him, or at the situation in general, he didn’t know. But her body shook against his, and she panted and clenched hard around the fingers he’d shoved into her.
He would have preferred to have his cock inside her, or to have his tongue lapping up all the delicious cream she’d made, but she’d seemed to have needed a more immediate reminder of whom she was dealing with. She didn’t seem to understand yet that he was a quick study and that she was one of his most important subjects to learn.
“Would you care to try that again?” He slid his fingers between his lips and sucked off all the taste of her.