by Tracy Lauren
“Bah! A missionary? You are a liar, and from the look of the charges against you, a criminal as well.”
“Now, if you would only allow me to explain myself. There is a very good explanation for each and every one of those charges.”
“I am not your judge, effa, I only take the creds. Now cough them up or move on.”
“What would you say if I told you I am on a secret mission, working directly for the Goddesses themselves?” I say quickly, trying to catch the old miser’s attention. Vivian is already blindly seeking my side, likely to pinch at me, so I side step away from her.
Dlaage stands now, his ruddy complexion reddening and the fins at the sides of his face flaring. “That is blasphemy and I will not allow it in my presence—”
“You say you are not my judge, Dlaage, but I think you are only too quick to judge me! Hear my words and gain the favor of the Goddesses!”
“I have had enough of—” he growls out, jabbing his fat, three-fingered hand through the chain link at me.
I take this as my cue to pull the cloak from Vivian’s body, revealing the goddess I have hidden beneath. Her face is filled with a mixture of shock and outrage, yet still, her form is one of true beauty. I am looking at her, but I hear when Dlaage sees my Goddess. It is a gurgle of pure shock followed by his scrambling to free himself from his cage of an office. Quickly he is groveling at Vivian's feet, and now her expression changes. She looks anxiously to me for help. I just nod my encouragement and lean back against the wall to enjoy the show.
“My Goddess! My Goddess, forgive me please! I had no idea! I thought this male was a criminal, if only I had known!”
“Dlaage, it is not the job of a male who walks in the path of the Goddesses to judge,” I tsk at him.
“Forgive me, forgive me!” he blubbers, trying to grip at Vivian’s shoes. She slinks back.
“Umm…don’t worry about it,” she tells him. Looking to me, she mouths the words: I don’t know what to do, with desperation in her eyes.
“We will be needing the ship, Dlaage. It is not for me, of course, but for the Goddess,” I supply.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t. The system will not allow me to release it without a cred transaction. There’s nothing I can—”
Vivian takes this opportunity to chime in. “Dlaage, you are a clever man…er, I mean, male. I’m sure you can think of some way to get our ship for us.”
“Well…I…uh… Thank you for your grace, my Goddess,” Dlaage grovels and stammers, “but I…well, maybe there is something I can—”
“Of course there is,” she tells him, reaching down to help him up from the ground. He gapes at the hand she places on his arm, his lips puffing and puckering in shock the way only a Hungue’s can. Vivian pats him gently, likely to distract from the shaking of her own fingers.
“I can…I can pay for the transaction myself!” Dlaage offers.
“I knew you would come up with a solution.” She smiles warmly at him.
“No. No, Dlaage. We would not ask you to do such a thing. Your creds are your own and hard earned,” I interrupt. Vivian does not know what he offers. To a man like Dlaage, 89,000 creds is likely his life savings…and then some. I will take my ship back, but I will not rob this man.
“I would do anything for the Goddess—” he starts.
“Anything but that. Thank you, Dlaage, but let us find another solution.”
He nods and his eyes blink rapidly as he works to solve this problem for the Goddess at his side. “Well, I…I could alter the lot numbers and find the ship with the least expensive fine. We could trade the vessels and pay the smaller fee?”
“Now that sounds like a plan.” I smile, clapping him on the back.
“Come, follow me,” he says, inviting us into his office. He offers Vivian the rickety chair at his desk, the only seat in the place, all while mumbling prayers and blessings under his breath.
“Let me see here,” he says, typing away at his handheld. “Okay, we have a Wag-cart model 230 in lot seven…the fine on that one is a total of…73 creds.”
“That is the solution we have been looking for, Dlaage!” I boom, handing over my cred reader and slapping the toll man’s back in good humor. Dlaage smiles back at me, looking beyond proud as he swipes my reader.
Once the transaction is complete Dlaage insists on personally escorting us to the lot holding my ship, and since his focus is Vivian and mine is the ship, I do not mind his accompaniment. As soon as I see my girl looming in the aisle ahead of us, I go bounding for her, leaving Vivian alone to play out her role as a Goddess to Dlaage.
Chapter 20
Vivian
“I have spent my entire life walking in your path,” the alien tells me.
“That’s…good,” I respond. An uncomfortable silence follows and I silently curse Dax for running off ahead of us. “Thanks,” I add, not knowing what else to say.
“You probably already know this, but my father was”—he lets out a long sigh—“not the best of examples. It wasn’t until I was a young man that the word of the Goddesses reached me. Missionaries visited my family’s village. Suddenly, it was as if a light illuminated my world, clearly defining everything I had always questioned.
“Even as a child,” he continues, “I had a deep understanding of the way a male should behave, even if my father did not. When the missionaries explained to me why he was so…much the way that he was…well, everything finally made sense. I signed on for my first mission that same day and have been with Lock ever since. I met my wife in Lock’s service and have had four boys of my own. Each are married, hard-working males who love and care for their families. They live with honor and that is my greatest pride in life. I owe that all to the first moment I heard of you and your sisters.”
I squeeze my hands together to keep them from shaking. Dlaage’s heartfelt sharing is really putting the pressure on. This man has dedicated his life to his religious beliefs, and here I am impersonating his deity. I feel like I should be doing or saying something to validate his life choices. Well, mostly I just feel like a jerk, but it really does sound like his beliefs have made a positive impact on his life and family. Lord knows he’s doing better than my parents ever did.
“You’re uh…you’re doing a real great job, Dlaage,” I tell him and cringe. I guess this is why I never pursued a career in public speaking. Still, though, the short alien man beams up at me, like I really am something special. Like my words are really something inspiring. We walk slowly together and I find myself thinking of my own lackluster parents and my grandmother who eventually raised me.
“Dlaage, I’m not really very good at talking to people, so I want to apologize if I don’t say this right. But it sounds like you and your wife have been wonderful parents, and there’s nothing in the universe more important than that. I’m glad that you…uh…walk in the path of the Goddesses, but the goodness it takes to do something meaningful like that, that comes from within you.”
Dlaage slows to a halt. “Kinder words have never been spoken to me, Asterope. You have my gratitude,” he tells me as he swipes tears from his eyes.
I hear clanking metal and look over to see that we have arrived at Dax’s ship. Dax bustles around checking exterior panels and doing what I assume is very important spaceship captain-y stuff.
“Everything looks to be in perfect condition. You are a first-rate impound lot chief, Dlaage!” Dax calls over excitedly, before disappearing inside the ship. The vessel powers on immediately.
“I guess it’s time to go. Thanks again, Dlaage,” I issue my awkward goodbye.
Dlaage grabs my hands with his thick, three-fingered, alien ones. The look in his eyes is honest and urgent. Something about it makes me feel like he isn’t talking to some alien deity, but that he’s really talking to me. “I know you will find what you seek, Asterope. You and your sister will right the wrongs of the universe. You will set everything right,” he tells me.
My stomach drops and I’m grate
ful for his steadying grip on my hands. “Some things can’t be undone,” I tell him, his sincere words reaching a cold place, deep in my chest.
“It is true, some things may never be undone, but all things can be set right,” he says, releasing my hands and dropping into a groveling bow. I grab him quickly and pull him upright—I won’t have this poor man on his knees before me. Me: the liar, the coward, the frightened alien abductee who left her friends behind to save her own ass. Certainly, I am no Goddess.
“Thank you, Dlaage.” I search for something Goddess-like to say, something to show my gratitude, because I am grateful. And maybe not just for the ship, but maybe for the window into his world he has shown me. I think this is the point Dax has been trying to prove. While there are plenty of things for me to be scared of, there’s also so much…other stuff. Lives, mainly. People just living their lives. But I’m no public speaker, so I settle on: “May your family be blessed for many generations to come.”
Luckily, this seems to be exactly what Dlaage wanted to hear most from me, and the tears traveling down his ruddy cheeks flow like a river as he waves to me. I climb the ramp to the ship, watching him over my shoulder the whole time.
Dax is waiting for me just inside the door. “Come, let’s get you buckled in,” he says, his voice more solemn than usual. Once on the bridge, I can see out the window to the walkways along the aisles filled with impounded ships. Dlaage still watches us reverently as Dax fires up the engine and pulls away. Our path takes us past the docking bay and Dax gets onto his comm.
“Talang, do a favor for me, yes?”
“Anything for you, my brother.”
“The pod I came in on? Sell it and split the creds with Dlaage.”
“Dax! You must be kidding. This is a class-one pod. It is worth too much, I can’t take that!” Talang argues.
“Consider it a gift for your daughters then,” he tells his friend, and they say their farewells.
“Nice. Wasn’t that Rennek’s pod?” I say after he turns the comm off.
“I will buy him a new one,” he replies. “Do you know who Dlaage mistook you for?”
“Eavesdropping again, I see,” I say without looking at him.
“Asterope. Do you know why?”
“No. I don’t know much of anything about the story. Kate told us, but I wasn’t listening. I was too busy crying,” I tell him, feeling sad all over again. Just saying Kate’s name feels as blasphemous as pretending to be a Goddess. I left them all behind…
“You did not have as much fun here,” he notes. When I look up, I see he is watching me with a concerned look on his beastly yet handsome face.
“What a marvel! I had less fun here than I did on the planet of the evil hamster women,” I joke. It’s probably even more of a marvel that I’m joking about it instead of crying. I think over the last few minutes in my mind. “I didn’t like pretending to be a Goddess, Dax, those shoes are too big to fill. Especially for someone like me.”
“Let me see if I have something to turn the adventure around,” he says, hopping to his feet. He enters some final instructions into the control panel and grabs my hand, pulling me deeper into the ship.
We end up in a small kitchen. While it is small, it is still far more luxurious than the pod. It isn’t as big as the cafeteria-like room from the cargo ship, but it is definitely more posh. More so than I’d expect from Dax anyway. Honestly, I expected it to be more like a dirty bachelor pad, strewn with four-month-old takeout boxes and dirty dishes. But the place is actually quite nice, and the even bigger shock is that it’s clean.
Dax pulls out a stool from the counter and motions for me to sit. He digs around in a cupboard and brings back two glasses, then opens a small fridge and retrieves a bottle of what I imagine is alcohol.
I sigh, already knowing that I will drink and that I will drink a lot. I look forward to getting to that numb place somewhere near the bottom of the bottle. “I have to warn you, I’m a lightweight and I can guarantee this night will end with me hugging a toilet bowl.”
He pulls a seat out next to me and slides in close. “I assure you, I will not let that come to pass. Besides, if you wish to hug something, it will be me, not the toilet.”
“I can assure you, I will not let that come to pass,” I tell him as he fills my glass.
“The night is young, my little Goddess. I think you speak too soon.”
“Don’t call me that. I don’t want to be a Goddess. Bah,” I cough. “This is strong!”
Dax just leans back in his seat, smiling at me with that cocky, pretty boy smile of his and he sips at his own drink like it’s water. “You do not want to be a Goddess, you do not want to be a librarian, what do you want to be?”
“I want to be Vivian. Whoever that is,” I say, stifling my cough with a wince on the next sip.
“Whoever that is indeed,” Dax says, appraising me.
I gulp down the rest of my drink and motion for him to top me off. “I think I’m ready to tell you my secret now, Dax. I think if we are going to be traveling together, you should know who I really am.”
He doesn’t speak. His expression isn’t mocking. It’s open and concerned. He doesn’t joke or tease, and I’m thankful for it. It’s hard enough for me to admit it to myself, admitting it to someone else is humiliating and I don’t know if I can do it if I feel like he’s judging me. Though, I suppose that’s exactly what I’m asking him to do. To judge me for who I really am. To see if he’ll still keep me on as a traveling companion or ditch me at the next backwater planet or space station. I wouldn’t blame him if he did.
I gulp at my drink, already feeling its effects tingling at my temples and lips. Dax doesn’t rush me. When I finally speak I’m prepared to tell him the entire ugly truth.
“On Earth I was nobody. I was a shadow of a person, hardly living life. When you guys asked me my name back on the cargo ship I thought I’d reinvent myself. So, I lied. My name isn’t Vivian. I’m just a friendless, lonely, librarian in training who thought she could be something other than what she really is. But no matter how hard I try, I’m still just me.”
“Why change your name? Why not keep your name and reinvent your person?”
It is the obvious question, but still I cringe. I can’t even look at him when I say it. “Prudence,” I groan, with my hands over my eyes. He doesn’t laugh, though, and eventually I peek out at him. “I changed my name because my real name is Prudence.”
“What is so bad about Prudence?” he asks.
“The name or the person?” I counter.
“Let’s start with the name.”
“It’s an old-fashioned name on my planet—honestly a pretty good match for the life I had built there. See, I was raised by my grandma. I never really fit in with people my own age, so all of my friendships from about six years old and up were with the elderly. In elementary school I was invisible. In high school people teased me ruthlessly. Particularly about my name—”
“Because it is old-fashioned?” he asks, confused.
“Oh. Well, that and because it also means…um…how do I explain this? When you call someone a prude on Earth it means they are…uh…not very sexually inclined? Um…no, that’s no good. What I mean to say is, a prude is someone who is a goody-goody and doesn’t like to have fun, particularly in a sexual sense.”
“Why would they say this about you?”
“High school is when most kids start to explore their sexuality, date, and stuff like that. But I was so painfully shy and my grandmother was pretty protective over me, so I just never experienced those things. Instead I volunteered at the senior center and won citizenship awards. Other kids would see me taking seniors to the mall or the movies and eventually I got a reputation that matched my name.”
“High school was a difficult time for you?” he questions, and I scoff.
“It was all a difficult time for me, really. When I was little I lived with my mom. She was messed up, you know? It was the drugs. I didn’t un
derstand it back then, but she’d get scary sometimes…she’d act different. There’d be times that she would hurt me if I was being too loud or bothering her, or times that she wouldn’t feed me. People would come and go at all hours of the night. I was always so scared. Eventually my grandma stepped in…or maybe my mom just dumped me with her. I can’t really remember.”
“But my grandma was my shining light. She took care of me. She always made me feel safe. Before her, I didn’t even know what it meant to feel safe. When the kids at school would tease me about my mom, or my clothes, or my name, it didn’t matter. I was still just so happy to have my grandma. And hell, even though I resented how well I fit in with the elderly crowd, I couldn’t deny that I actually fit in there.” I look up to see Dax’s expression. Even though I can’t read what lies behind his eyes, I’m grateful I don’t see pity in them. I clear my throat and take another gulp of my drink, embarrassment over my sharing settling in on me.