Lin's Challenge

by Mara Jaye

  She takes my hand and pulls me out into the mineshaft. I give her fingertips a squeeze before letting go. “Thank you. You’ll have to tell me what a fire hose is. I forgot to ask yesterday.” Before the gates clang shut, a stronger blast of water cleans out the rooms. Lin’s right. I do not want to be caught in there after the gentle shower is finished.

  She grinned and picked up a pickax, giving it to me. “Sure, as soon as you explain sass to me.”

  I take the tool and can’t help but return her amazing smile. “Sas, short on the ess, is my planet’s rotation around our sun.”

  “Ah, a year.”

  After pulling up Earth’s statistics, I run the math. “Nearly. Our year, equal to your sas, is three hundred and twenty of your days long.”

  “A shorter year with more frequent birthdays and holidays? Hell yeah. Or is that pless yeah?”

  I need to warn her about using pless too often. It’s actually not for polite company, and my mother would be horrified if Lin said the word in front of her. “Um, something like that.”

  “How old am I on your world? How old would you be on mine?”

  Her enthusiasm is fun, and I need to know more. “How old are you on yours?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “All right.” I watch her use both arms with the tool. She’s feeling better, thankfully. “Doing the math, considering we have twenty-five hour days, you’d be around twenty-nine, maybe thirty.”

  “No!” She laughed and shook her head. “I can’t be that old. We’re living on Earth no matter what, unless…” She pauses for a moment to look at me. “Unless we can live somewhere and I’m younger there.”

  “Do you want a planet with air or no air?”

  “The key words are live on.”

  “Ah, a solid surface planet with an atmosphere and temperate climate means I’d have to find a planet circling a huge star.”

  “The longer it takes, the younger I am, right?”

  “You know longer is always better,” I can’t help but quip and laugh when she gasps. Lin is perfect no matter how old she is and I say, “Don’t worry about your age. Thirty isn’t bad at all. I’d be thirty-five on Earth.”

  “So you’re how old on your planet?”

  “Thirty-two.” Because I need to impress her, I ignore my orders to be quiet about anything beyond sixth world and add, “I’m rather young to be an Enforcer. Most people my age are still Protectors.”

  “Very good. I’m a store clerk, and most people my age are successful.”

  Her tone leads me to believe she’s being sarcastic or at least wry. I’m not sure what clerk means. The translator is using her word, not mine. With store in front of it, I think she’s a Helper. “You help people in stores with what they need?”

  “Exactly that.”

  “You’d do well on my planet. Helpers are a valued group of workers.”

  “As much as Enforcers?”

  I repeat the phrase drummed into us as soon as we’re old enough to understand. “Everyone has their place, and every place is important.” I stop work as a sound I’ve been listening for grows louder. “How is your arm? Can you hit on both your rock and mine for a little while?”

  “Sure? Bathroom break?”

  “No, dinner time.”

  “So soon? Doesn’t matter, just bring me back some dessert.”

  I laugh and head up the mine shaft. The food bin is far enough ahead to be more than half full, and if I jog, I’ll get there in time to grab several bags. As I approach, I can see there is a fight of sorts. Everyone else has had the same idea due to yesterday’s shortage. After a quick check of who’s there, the fucker who attacked Lin is still not around. I push my way through and reach in for my own handful of bags. A sharp pain stings my forearm. I yelp and pull back my hand. There’s a bite mark on my skin with some punctures deeper than others.

  The bite aches and I shove aside who I think did it. I grab several more food packets before pushing my way back out of the crush. Just in time, too, because a securbot is flying toward us. I ease away and walk back to Lin as the fuss dies in the bot’s whirring arrival. Others grab at my food but are easily deflected by my elbows.

  As I approach, Lin turns to me and smiles a little before seeing how much I’m carrying. “Wow! You weren’t kidding.”

  She runs up to me, and I give her a food parcel to start with. She stops cold and stares at my forearm. “What the hell happened? Someone bit you.”

  “Weird, don’t you think, since I’m neither green nor liquid.”

  Taking my arm, she examines the wound. “What if it gets infected?”

  Not a chance, thanks to my bionans. “I have a strong immune system and this food,” I hold up a food pack, “Has a touch of medicines.”

  “I’d ask if it’s safe to eat, but it’s been a month or so, and I’m not dead yet.”

  While shoving a couple into each pants pocket, I watch her eat. One of the packs is empty, and I give her another one with a grin. “You make the goo look good.”

  “Sorry to be so rude but I’m starving.” She goes back to eating before adding, “Are you going to have anything?”

  “I will.” I should probably act desperate. The bionans were programmed to expect the mission might require long stretches without nourishment. I forgot to act hungry at appropriate times. “Yeah, it’s one of those so hungry I’m feeling ill.”

  “I felt that way the last time I missed the food bin.” She drank more of her dinner. “I’ve lost weight since then.” I examine her up and down before turning on the schematics to see what she’d look like with extra weight. She crosses her body with one arm. “Hey, no imagining me fatter, buddy. I kinda like being this slender for a change.”

  “It’s good to know women are the same all over the galaxy.”

  “Don’t tell me we’re expected to be skinny on other planets, too.”

  “Not skinny as much as conscious of your appearance.” I finish up with my meal. “We all are. It’s part of our programming to appeal to potential mates.”

  A thin sheen of sweat glistens across her skin. Her coloring keeps me fascinated with its vibrancy. The way her body moves also has me staring more than anything else. She’s beautiful but has this completely unaffected air as if her world had no reflective surfaces. She crumples up the food pack and tosses it aside. “I’d hoped the advanced civilizations would be above biology and the need to please others.”

  My body was wise to choose her as my match. She grins and glances away, and I realize I’ve been staring at her like a boy around his first love. “Sorry, you’re a little distracting.” Her face turns pink, and I rush in to address her statement about higher worlds and lower instincts. “Anyway, no matter how much we learn, our predispositions are animal. Which animal depends on what planet you’re from. But yeah, the need to appeal to someone special and please them physically is true for everyone.”

  “Good to know I’ll fit in somewhat. I don’t want to be the continually dumb one if I leave.” Before I can rebut her, she winces and shakes her head. “Damn, this hurts. I need to get back to work before the pain gets worse.” She picks up her ax and hits the rock wall. “How is it you can stroll all over for food yet not feel the translator trying to kill you?”

  As she’s working, I pick up my ax, too. I can’t tell her about the bionans, of course. “It does. I just have a high pain tolerance.” I hit the wall, too, for emphasis. “The work helps. I just pretend I’m bashing on whoever took both of us.”

  “I’ve been imagining Mr. Fox from yesterday. I’m glad you’re here, too, because I can barely tell them apart.” She leans closer to me. “He could be a couple of people down, and I wouldn’t know it.”

  I would. “Don’t worry. I’ve watched for him, and he’s nowhere around.”

  “How could he leave his work area without the robots gunning him down?”

  “Found a vacant one? Ran off far enough to be eliminated without us hearing him? As long as he’s far
from you, I don’t care.” One of the Gleetars is staring at us, and I glare at him. “Anyone who even looks at you will answer to me.”

  Lin isn’t even paying attention as the Blendarian works a little more intensely next to her. “That’s really good to know.” She picks up a chunk of rock, which fell at her feet, and tosses it on the conveyor belt. “If there’s anything I can do for you in return, just say the word, and it’s done.”

  The Blendarian snorts. “I know what I’d like. Care to let me protect you?”

  I pause in my work and turn toward him with the ax. “Touch her and die.”

  “Fine, no touching.” His wide, thin lips turn up in a hideous smile. “Let me watch when she pays you?”

  “She doesn’t exist to you, buddy.” I step closer to him and growl, “You don’t watch, you don’t talk, and you sure as pless don’t touch. Got it?”

  Muttering something I’m sure is a curse in his language, he returns to busting rock. Lin leans closer to me. “Thanks, again. He’s right, though. Sex is probably the only way I can pay you f—”

  “Stop.” Yes, I’m saying this more to me than her because my dick is already starting to stir at the images crowding my brain. “You can pay me back by staying out of trouble and by being my friend.”

  “Ow, friend zoned by a luscious Greek god. Yer killin’ me, man.”

  She’s grinning at me, so the tone doesn’t match the words at all. Friendzoned doesn’t translate except as a friend in an area. Luscious does, and I know my face is darkening from the rush of blood. Embarrassment affects a lot of species, including mine. “Just, no. I don’t mean to put you in a friends area, but don’t want you to owe me in that way, either.”

  “Not even a little?”

  Lin’s smile lets me know she’s teasing, I think. “A lot but not in debt repayment.”

  “Oh.”

  She’s quiet for a while. Even though I want to know everything she’s thinking, a system notification lets me know I have maintenance to do. All of my focus, biological and mechanical, have been on Lin and not on my mission. Thank the Origins for my peripheral senses. Otherwise, the director and G’nar would gang up to kick my butt back to Protector status.

  Sorting through the input doesn’t take long. I leave in some of the time I held Lin, but very little. After marking it “Personal,” I move the data to private. The information could be requested, and if the Leaders become involved, I’d have to turn it over to them. Let’s hope they consider the information mundane enough to ignore.

  Lin would need to know about everything I am and where I’m from before we became close. I’d want to inform her that anything intimate could be viewed by everyone in my command chain. After a glance at her, she seems as into her own thoughts as I am. I’ve recorded everything down here. The systems, the lack of guards, and the hot damp smell. Even now when I test the air, my stomach churns. No wonder a bag of goop a day is good enough for most of us. I ask Lin, “Does it smell bad in here to you?”

  “Bad? No, worse than bad. Like someone’s butt after they’ve wiped with a dirty gym sock and eaten fish.”

  “A rectum wiped with an unclean athletic foot covering from someone who’s ingested an aquatic creature?” I glance at the Blendarian two Gleets to Lin’s left. “You’re right. That’s exactly the smell.”

  She stops work long enough to nudge into me. “That’s so bad! Does the frog men know they’re aquatic?”

  “It’s something they don’t like to think about since their ancestors and sentient distant cousins still breathe water. In fact, waterbreather is an insult to them.”

  “Good to know. I suppose if your distant cousins were primitive waterbreathers, you’d want to forget you were related.”

  “Exactly.” She goes back to work, this time with a slight smile. I need to get her out of here. Hell, get G’nar and us out of here, and back on Ghar but especially Lin. She deserves better than this hellhole.

  I run through our escape plans, adding her as a variable. None of them work. She doesn’t have the speed to keep up with G’nar and me. The delay she causes dooms our efforts every time. I refuse to accept the results and start changing the parameters in trial after trial.

  The three of us, she and I, and G’nar and her with the only success is when we leave her here. I even try that scenario and hate the results because G’nar and I escape. If she’s alive by the time I can come back for her, the Alliance will insist she go to a lesser world. A fifth world probably, since the lesser ones would view her as advanced being to curry favor with at best or abuse for her power at worst.

  No. She and I will both stay on a second world. I have the bionans and knew when I accepted them I’d be trapped at a first or second world level. Anything lesser is too dangerous anywhere else. Even the most primitive of nanites have been weaponized by worlds and left void of life as a result. There’s no way I could do that to Lin’s planet or any other.

  Her work rhythm slows, and I glance at her. “Everything all right?”

  “Yeah.” She rubs her neck with one hand and hanging on to the ax with the other. “I want a bathroom break but can’t decide if it’s worth going.”

  “Why?”

  “By the time I find a place private enough, the pain from this little bitch is unbearable.” She lets the ax fall but doesn’t stop trying to massage her neck. “Too bad there’s not some sort of deactivation code on this thing.”

  I’m an idiot. The solution has been in front of me the entire time. If she has the latest in nanotechnology via my biological nanites, the Alliance will have no choice. She’ll either live on a planet with nanotech or be banished to an eighth world of no sentient life. To prevent the exile, I could cement our bond and accept our union fully. Between the bond and tech, I’d be backing the Alliance into a corner.

  Except.

  I’d be backing Lin into a corner, too. No, I’d want her to join me willingly. I’ll quickly program some basic bionans to deactivate the punishment measures on her translator. Just an overwrite so the Vahdmoshi can’t punish her for long bathroom breaks. We’ll need a few seconds alone for the tech transfer. “Come on. I’ll go with you.”

  “You can’t watch me every second and besides, privacy.”

  I grin, sure as to why she wouldn’t want me there for this type of break. “Usually, I’d agree, but this time I have a solution for the pain. As soon as I’m done, you’re on your own for a while.”

  “All right.” She let her ax fall. “Follow me.”

  Of course, I do, watching that adorable butt of hers as she leads me on. Various men watch her walk by. I want to laugh at the glares they give me. I’d hate me, too, if I didn’t have a woman like Lin to care for. She looks back at me with a slight smile. “This looks good.”

  She ducks inside, and I join her. Her alluring scent distracts me, and I take a step forward until we almost touch. She’s lovelier in visible light, so I turn up the photoreceptors instead of switching to infrared.

  I lean forward to kiss her, and she puts her hands on my chest. “Easy there. I was promised a solution to the neck pain. Fix it, and I’ll owe you more than one.”

  She’s right. I want the nanites to go to the translator, not to her. A kiss would place them in the wrong system. “Sorry, I’ll have to be behind you.”

  “Ooh, kinky.”

  “Really? Seems rather ordinary to me,” I chide, and her snort of a laugh makes me laugh, too. “Lift your hair from your neck and hold still for a moment.” After I gather all of the programmed nanos to the tip of my tongue, I lick her translator. They’re all transferred and working their magic. “It should happen fast, relatively speaking, and you won’t feel anything from the device other than a vague tingling when the security has been called. So you’ll need to pay attention for the securbots and react as if everything is normal. Otherwise, they’ll get suspicious.” She lets her hair go, and I regret not stealing a kiss on her neck while I had the chance. “Also, I didn’t deactivate the trackin
g program because doing so would trip an alarm system. I’ll have to work on it later and provide an update.”

  “Turkh, what did you do?” She turns to face me. “I don’t understand a word you just said. Did you short circuit this? How much time do I have before it resumes operations? Shit, Turkh. Go.” She starts pushing me out of the room. “If you can understand me, stand guard, but not too close, and I’ll be done in a couple of minutes. Go back if your translator starts hurting you.”

  “I will. Go on and do your business.”

  “Gah! Still nothing. I’m gonna have to learn a new language.” Her voice fades as she goes further into the cave. “Damn it, languages because I’m doomed without this thing. Damn it all to hell.”

  The nanos are reprogramming from the base code up. I know she’ll understand me by the time she’s done. I don’t want to laugh at her distant grumbling and occasional curse, but it’s rather cute. We’re in deep trouble, but now I know we’re in this together.

  She’s quiet now. Too quiet. I wait a few seconds more before calling back to her. “Lin? Are you all right?”

  “I think so.” I hear her wet footsteps as she comes back. “My neck doesn’t hurt, my arm feels great, and I can understand your Gharian.” Her eyes widen. “I even know what Gharian means. What the hell did you do to me?”

  Chapter Ten

  Lin

  This. Is. Amazing. I know so much more, now. I can even do math and know what a quadratic equation is for. Still end my sentences on a preposition, but so what? I can relearn grammar later. I stop and stare at Turkh in the dark room. Correct that. I can learn ALL the grammar from ALL the languages. “You gave me information.”

  “I did?”

  “You’ve given me the universe.” He looks panicked, and I hold up a hand. “No, you just gave me the galaxy, but still. It’s a hell of a lot.” My neck begins tingling, almost a tickle, and I laugh. “We need to get back to work, don’t we? How funny.” I give Turkh a kiss before I walk past him. “Let’s go.”