by Gini Koch
Bruno looked over his shoulder at me, winked, then turned back and flew on.
“Um, Chuckie? If we look at Bruno’s coloration, we have to ask ourselves if he would not, in fact, look totally like he belongs here on Planet Colorful.”
“Good point,” he conceded. “But whether that helps us, hinders us, or makes no difference at all for whatever’s coming is something we’re going to be finding out. And I truly doubt that the three of us can get away with blending in. We haven’t blended yet.”
“I think we’re about to find out,” Christopher said, voice tense. “Because I can see the caravan more clearly, and they have catapults. Incoming!”
He was right. Something was flying up from the caravan toward us. Something moving very fast.
“Um, guys? Is that what I think it is? Because if it is, I have one thing to shout. Bruno! Abort! Abort! Get to Kitty now!”
CHAPTER 22
WHAT WAS FLYING up toward us wasn’t a projectile, in that sense. What whoever on the ground had put into their catapult and tossed to us was, as far as I could tell, a cat.
Hyperspeed and my shouted warning or not, Bruno wasn’t able to get out of the way. The cat hit my Peregrine and flipped itself around so it was on Bruno’s back.
I didn’t think about it. Bruno was under attack and that meant he needed help. I jumped up onto the back of my katyhopper and, with Chuckie and Christopher both shouting at me, leaped toward the Peregrine.
Hit the bird and was able to grab the cat by the scruff of its neck and get it away from Bruno. I was able to hold the cat out and away from me with one hand while I got Bruno tucked under my other arm. Did this all at hyperspeed, go me.
Of course, the problem was that I wasn’t able to fly, neither was the struggling and yowling cat I was now holding, nor was Bruno, because I was holding him. I was also pretty sure he was hurt—the cat had big claws.
The cat was also, typical for the area we were now in, a rusty orange color, with some blacks, browns, and yellows for highlights. Elongated, pointy ears, and extremely bright blue eyes. It looked a little foxy and a lot like a caracal, but in the same way that Bruno looked a lot like a peacock—similar and yet stronger, a lot more human-level intelligent, and just a little more alien.
I could have let go of the cat, of course, but as far as I knew it had been thrown into the air much against its will. Most cats didn’t think flying was da bomb, after all, and falling even less so. I could relate. However, like it or not, I was plummeting downward, and I had no chance if I didn’t do something.
So I pulled the cat into my body. “Please don’t claw Kitty, Ginger. This is going to hurt badly enough when we land.”
In point of fact, the cat didn’t claw me. It looked up—well, relatively, based on the fact that we were kind of tumbling through the air—and gave me a very intelligent, very satisfied, and rather pleased look.
Checked Bruno. He seemed okay. Shaken, but okay. However, I wasn’t sure that he was able to fly right now, since he wasn’t trying to get away and take back to the air. “Hang on Bruno, my bird. And Ginger, you hang on, too. Just without your claws if at all possible, both of you, please and thank you. Kitty hopes these aren’t going to be her last words, by the way.”
Memory nudged. I had Poofs on Board, meaning I could ask for Poof assistance. The last time I’d fallen from great height, down a long garbage shaft during Operation Assassination, the Poofs had provided a soft, safe landing.
But before I could speak, we hit, but not the ground.
We hit something, or rather, someone.
“Ooof!”
“Wow. If we’re not about to be killed, and if tossing Ginger up into the air wasn’t some sort of attack or, even worse, some sort of bizarre Start The Fighting Now ritual, this is really kind of romantic. If I ignore the ‘ooof,’ that is.”
Jeff grinned as relief that he was here and okay washed over me. “You fell a long way, baby, that’s all. And your purse is even heavier than normal.” Then he kissed me, and I didn’t think about anything else for a good long moment.
Sadly, “moment” was accurate. Our kiss wasn’t long. In part because I had two struggling and, now that we were on the ground, heavy animals in my arms, and in other part because I heard a lot of shouting.
Jeff heard it, too, of course. He ended our kiss and put me down. “It’s okay, baby. They’re friendly.”
“The natives around here throw cats up into the air via catapult to say ‘welcome to the neighborhood’?”
“No. The Lecanora I’m traveling with launched the ocellar before I could stop them. Hang on, I need to make sure they let Christopher and Chuck land.” He trotted off before I could ask him who the Lecanora were or how he was traveling with them. Of course, I was traveling with katyhoppers, so I was in no position to pass judgment.
I put Ginger onto the ground then did a fast examination of Bruno. Bruno seemed okay—a little bleeding, but as with everyone from Alpha Four, he was healing quickly. Once I was done he nudged his head up under my chin and I gave him a big hug. “Kitty’s glad her big brave bird is okay.” Bruno shared that I was the best in his book, too.
Interestingly, Ginger didn’t run off, but sat at my feet, in front of me. Now that we were on the ground I could verify Ginger’s actual size. She—and I was sure it was a female in the same way I known Bruno was a boy when we’d first met—was about the size of a Peregrine without the tail feathers. So, smaller than a full-grown Earth caracal would be, but still, significantly larger than a housecat. So, fox-caracal was kind of right. Wondered if I should come up with a species name, then figured that Jeff had sort of insinuated that this was an ocellar, and decided to go with that for now and focus on more pressing concerns.
“Bruno, is it safe to put you down next to Ginger?”
Bruno eyed the big cat, who eyed him back. They had an animal conversation that I couldn’t really catch, new mind-reading abilities notwithstanding, but finally Bruno kind of shrugged his wings, which I took to mean that he was willing to risk it but that if Ginger started something, Bruno was now prepared to finish it.
Put the bird down and he and the cat sized each other up. Then Ginger leaned toward Bruno and gently head-butted him. Bruno seemed surprised, but he head-butted back. Then they both settled at my feet.
Animal war averted, I looked to see what they were looking at. They weren’t actually watching Jeff but Chuckie and Christopher and the three katyhoppers, all of whom were landing near to us but away from the caravan, which meant Bruno, Ginger, and I were between them and whoever Jeff was with. Based on this particular greeting, could not blame them.
Christopher and Chuckie dismounted and came over to me. The katyhoppers hopped along behind them. Planet Colorful was full of interesting and, happily so far, mostly friendly animal life. Hoped this trend would continue. One snakipede was enough for my entire lifetime.
“Thanks for taking yet more years off of our lives,” Chuckie said as they reached us.
“What Chuck said,” Christopher chimed in, gracing me with Patented Glare #5. “Why did you decide to jump off of Pinky instead of asking him to go faster?”
Knew they weren’t going to like my answer. “I didn’t want the katyhoppers to get hurt any more than I wanted Bruno to get hurt.”
The katyhoppers all nudged up to me and gave me their equivalent of gentle head butts—meaning I got antennae strokes along my arms.
Chuckie nudged me when they were done and had moved back a bit. “It’s empathy more than mind reading, though I’m sure that’s in there somewhere, too. That’s why the animals become so instantly loyal to you. Your own form of empathy, I mean. Not like Jeff’s.”
“I’m assuming you mean my special form of empathy is why I can talk to the animals, any and all animals. Maybe, I guess. But there are a lot of people out there who love and adore and are beyond empathetic w
ith animals and they aren’t having conversations with them in the way I tend to. I had no success with the snakipede, by the way. And I have no idea about the loyalty.”
“Whatever it is,” Christopher said quietly, “please keep on doing it. And Chuck, I can now confirm that we are definitely on Beta Eight.”
He was looking toward where Jeff had gone and I finally decided it might be a good idea to see just who my husband was hanging with, so I took a good long look.
Who Jeff was with was less of a shock than Chuckie and I landing on the tops of trees had been, or Christopher riding to save us on a katyhopper, or, really, anything else that had happened on this planet so far. So we had that going for us.
CHAPTER 23
JEFF WAS HANGING with beings that looked remarkably like humanoid rodents. But not just any kind of rodents.
“They look like a cross between humans and mustelidae,” Chuckie said.
“All our natural sciences classes in college that you didn’t want to take but I did have sure paid off, haven’t they? Yeah, they do. All of the animals in that group, I might add.”
Well, the ones that were walking on two legs and were clearly the top of the sentience food chain, at least in the Brownish Lands, did. The animals drawing the caravans looked like brontosaurus horses, only small brontos and big horses. In addition to more animals that looked a lot like Ginger, which I assumed were ocellars, there were also animals that looked like pig-dogs. These were bigger than the ocellars and smaller than the bronto-horses.
“What are mustelidae?” Christopher asked.
“Our world’s genus name for the carnivorous rodents that include weasels, badgers, skunks, minks, ferrets, and wolverines,” Chuckie replied.
There were a lot of those beings bustling around the caravans, and while they all looked like humanoids, they were covering every mustelidae type Chuckie had just named and then some, both in body structures, fur, and markings.
“And otters.” The being Jeff was leading to us looked like he was a human otter. “The guy with Jeff looks kind of like Benedict Cumberbatch, doesn’t he?” If Cumberbatch was really a six-foot-plus-tall otter walking upright, that is.
“Who?” Christopher asked as Chuckie started laughing his head off. “Chuck, stop laughing. Whoever Jeff’s with, he’s the head of this group, you can tell by what he’s wearing on his head.”
“He has two branches that look like antlers on his head. Seriously, that proves he’s the top man around here?”
He did have a lovely thick coat of brown fur. He wasn’t wearing a lot of clothing, but he had a sword and sword belt, knee-high—or the otter equivalent—boots that allowed his four long, sharp claws to stick out from each paw, a Tarzan-like loincloth—presumably for modesty’s sake—and a cape made out of what looked like leaves. Clearly these natives were earthy types. Hoped that meant they weren’t going to try to attack or eat the katyhoppers.
“Bronze Age culture,” Chuckie said, as he managed to stop laughing. “There have been stranger things used to denote leadership, Kitty.”
“Good point. Okay, so Jeff seems chummy with King Benny there. That’s good, right?”
“Maybe.” Christopher sounded worried. “Only they may trust Jeff and not us.”
“Guess we’ll find out. Only Jeff and King Benny are coming over. Is that good?”
Chuckie looked around. “We’re not surrounded, unless the katyhoppers are on the side of these others.”
Looked where he was to see Saffron share that there was no way they were on the side of whatever these things were, particularly if these things were against us. Turkey shared that they’d play nicely with others, though, unless Chuckie, Christopher, or I gave the “attack” sign, and then they were up for the fight.
“The katyhoppers are on our side, whatever side that happens to be.”
“Wish we knew what side we were on,” Christopher muttered.
I’d have followed this particular thought longer, but Jeff and King Benny reached us.
King Benny looked at Ginger and said something to her in a language I didn’t recognize. She didn’t budge. He said whatever it was more strongly. Ginger remained firmly at my feet. He tried again, with emphasis in tone and hand gestures. Ginger yawned. Yeah, she was a cat.
“Ah, excuse me, but I think Ginger is kind of planning to hang out with me a little longer.”
Jeff shot me the “shut up, shut up” look, but King Benny looked at me sharply. “She belongs to me,” he said in perfect English.
“Okay, time out. That I had no idea what King Benny was saying to Ginger here makes total sense. But there’s no way in the world he can speak my language.” Animals were one thing. Highly sentient animals were another. Then again, the katyhoppers were clearly highly sentient, so maybe it was just my thing no matter what, where, who, or what.
“Now isn’t the time,” Jeff said quickly. “This is my mate, Kitty, my blood relative, Christopher, and our boon companion, Charles.” Wondered if he’d said Charles instead of Chuck because there were woodchucks walking on their hind legs in the caravan and I’d just missed spotting them. Gave it at least a fifty-fifty shot. Why he was giving us old-fashioned titles I had less of a guess, though figured the answer would be Bronze Age Culture and so didn’t comment. “This is Clan Leader Musgraff. Clan Leader, my family, like me, would like to help you.”
“Honestly, I’d really like to know how it is that King Benny understands a word you’re saying, Jeff. Along with how I can understand him. Before we agree to anything else.”
“Jeff said not now, Kitty,” Christopher snapped.
King Benny gave Christopher a long look. “The Mate of the Messenger of the Gods should not be dismissed, even if you are blood kin.”
Couldn’t speak for the guys, but I did a fast mindset change. “Thank you, Clan Leader Musgraff.”
He shook his head. “I am not insulted by your use of an affectionate name for me, Mate of the Messenger of the Gods.”
“Ah, I’d prefer that you call me Kitty, King Benny.”
He nodded. “As you wish . . . Kitty. But I wonder, why do the Gods question their ability to understand us?”
“Ah . . .” Had no good answer for this one. Honestly wasn’t prepared to be a God or God Mate or whatever.
“She is surprised you understand us,” Chuckie said quickly. “We are impressed and your wisdom proves your leadership.”
Wasn’t sure how otters showed they were pleased, but had a good guess that King Benny was, because his eyes lit up at the compliment and he smiled. At least, I was pretty sure it was a smile of pleasure, not aggression. He had a lot of sharp, pointy teeth, just like an otter would, so it was hard to be positive. “The Gods are said to be wise.” He cocked his head at Jeff. “I believe you have deceived us.”
“Me?” Jeff looked hugely guilty, of course. A-Cs couldn’t lie, well, most of them anyway, and Jeff was usually the shining example of their lack of fabrication skills. Today was no exception.
King Benny nodded, then bowed deeply to all of us. “It is clear to me that you are more than messengers from the Gods. You are the Gods themselves. I will not share this with my people if you do not wish it, but I do not understand why you would not wish it.”
“Because we need your people to work with us willingly,” Chuckie replied. “Not just to blindly follow our requests. This is how your people will learn and grow.”
“Ah.” King Benny nodded, making his tree antlers move in a kind of funny way. Controlled the Inner Hyena because I was focused. Go me. “You are wise. I see you for who you are now, Alcalla.”
“Alcalla?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking.
“The God of Wisdom,” King Benny said. “You can test me all you want, Shealla, I will not fail you, any more than we have failed Leoalla, your mate and King of the Gods.”
Took a wild one
and guessed that Shealla was the Queen of the Gods. Always nice to be appreciated. “No testing is intended, King Benny. But, I would like to speak with my mate and our family in private, for just a short while.”
“As the Gods wish it, so it will be.” King Benny bowed again, then backed away. After he was a few feet from us, King Benny turned and walked back to his caravan. He had a short, thick tail but I was fairly sure it was prehensile, based on the fact that it was curled around a short sword. Meaning he’d been ready to attack if necessary. Good thing he’d decided we were all Gods.
Waited to speak until he was back with his people. “Okay, clearly these people think we’re Gods. Go team. But I want some answers, Jeff, and I want them now.”
CHAPTER 24
“LET’S START WITH how in the hell King Benny and I can understand each other perfectly, and go from there. Please and thank you and chop chop time’s a wastin’. If that’s alright with you, Christopher, and all that.”
“Fine,” Christopher said, sounding like it wasn’t.
“She won’t stop until it’s explained anyway,” Chuckie said with a laugh. “But, Kitty, I’d just like to point out that you had no issue with the Planetary Council speaking English.”
“Because Crazy Moira of the Free Women made the point that radio waves traveled, and that was confirmed by the rest. The beings in the Planetary Council are all Space Aged or more. That they learned our languages or whatever before they dropped by for a visit I can believe. Not buying it with King Benny there, unless Bronze Age in this world means interstellar communications capable.”
Jeff sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “Implants.”
“King Benny has implants?”
“No,” Christopher snapped. “You do. We all do. Universal communication chips. They hear enough words and they translate that to your brain.”