"Oh, for wiping. Is there any chance that this will have an unexpected side effect on me, like the tea did? Am I going to, like, break out?” On my ass? The thought makes me shudder.
"Honestly, I have no idea." But the possibility seems to bother him almost as much as it bothers me.
"I'm willing to risk it." I take the moss. "When you gotta go, you gotta go. Oh!” I turn back, at the door of his hut. “Do you want me to bring this back? I mean, is it reusable?”
“I will have no further use for it, once you’re done with it,” he tells me, and the twitch of his lips is the only sign of his amusement.
"Okay, so I'll— What are you doing?" I ask as he follows me toward the door. "You're not going to come with me?"
“I am. You have no defensive capabilities whatsoever.”
"I think I'll be fine long enough to wipe my ass," I insist.
"So then, you know which plants not to squat over? You'll be safe if a predator comes while you're relieving yourself?”
"Well, no, but —"
He stands taller, his arms crossed over his chiseled, fuzzy chest. “Then I'd like to institute my first rule —"
"Guideline."
"—and it states that you will not go anywhere on your own unless I deem it safe. At least until you’ve seen more of this planet than can be seen from inside a glass bubble.”
"I'm not— I told you, I don't know why I'm here. I don't know who brought me here. But I am not a customer. I'm not a… I'm not a voyeur." I really don't want him to think that of me. “I just woke up in a cage, and some man in a black mask pushed me out a hole in the floor of his shuttle. Now, if you're done interrogating me, I'd like to go relieve my bladder."
He gestures toward the closed door. "After you."
Outside, he leads me into the woods and gestures to a patch of ground cover. I wave my handful of moss at him, wordlessly commanding that he turn and give me some privacy. "Could you, like, hum a song or something?”
"Why would I—?"
"So you won't hear me."
He looks confused. But then he starts humming a soft tune.
When I’m finished, I put my hand on his shoulder and he stops humming, startled. "Thank you. That was really pretty. What was it?"
"I don't remember the name of the song," he tells me as he leads me back to the hut. "Nor can I remember many of the words. But I'll never forget the tune. My mother used to sing it to me when I was a small child."
Inside again, he grabs two large water pouches. "What are you doing?" I ask.
"Getting fresh water, so you can wash your hands.”
"Can I carry something?"
He hesitates for a moment, then he reaches up for two extra pouches on a top shelf. "Thank you."
I smile, relieved. "I'm just happy to finally be useful."
On the way to the nearest stream, I study everything we pass. I haven’t really had a chance to notice my surroundings much, until now. After a few minutes, I noticed that Lohr is watching me. “What?” I ask.
“What does it all look like, to you? I assume you’ve seen all this from the air, or from inside one of those glass bubbles—”
“Again, I’m not a tourist,” I reiterate.
“But it must be different like this. Actually walking out here, where you can truly experience the enclosure. Where you can see, and smell, and feel things.”
“It is. It’s fascinating, and a little terrifying,” I admit. “It’s crazy how something so controlled can feel so wild.”
“Are you talking about me, or the plants?”
His question surprises me. He sees and understands far more than I’ve given him credit for. Far more than my father gives the Fetoji people credit for.
“Both, I suppose. Is that… Is that offensive? Thinking of you as wild?”
“It’s more offensive to think of me as tamed. As captured and corralled,” he growls. “But I suppose those are just as true as ‘wild’ is.”
I think about that as we walk. About how different Lohr is from what I expected of a Fetoji man. A few steps after we enter the woods, I stop to exclaim over a beautiful, bright purple flower. "I've never seen anything quite like this!" Its petals are delicate—almost lacy—and its leaves unfurl around the stem in complex, overlapping patterns.
"It's poisonous." He pulls me away from the flower. “Touching the petals will give you blisters. Drinking a tea made from the petals or leaves will kill you."
I frown up at him. “I don’t know anything about flowers. Even the ones on Earth. Did your parents teach you about that flower?”
“My mother taught me what all of these plants are." He tugs me gently toward the stream again. "My father taught me that they would all be even more beautiful growing in their natural habitat."
"Is that true? I mean, isn't everything here pretty much the same as it would be on your homeworld?" That was the whole goal of the planetary engineering.
“Of course not.” He looks at me as if I might be running catastrophically short on brain cells. “How could it be? Do you really think there’s only one kind of tree, on Fetoja? Is there only one kind on your homeworld?"
"Well, no, there are hundreds of kinds of trees on Earth. Maybe thousands." Yet…somehow it never occurred to me that maybe these spica trees aren’t the only kind that grow on Fetoja. Did the planetary engineers just pick the ones they liked the best? The ones that looked the most exotic?
What kind of an effect would an exclusion of that magnitude have on the biome? On the people and animals who live here? Who subsist off of only the plants and animal species the planetary engineers saw fit to include in an enclosure that was supposedly an exact reproduction of the conditions on Fetoja?
“But since I've never been there—I doubt I will ever be there—I’ll have to take my father at his word that the seasons were longer and more diverse on our homeworld than here. That the colors were brighter, the rain gentler, and the prey more plentiful. That most of our people lived in actual dens, rather than these huts set up for us in the enclosure.”
“Wait, the Fetoji people don’t live in huts, on their homeworld?”
“Some do, from what I understand. But according to my father, most of our people live in dens—small caves that are either naturally occurring or are carved into the land. Why? Do all the humans on Earth live in one kind of habitat?”
“Of course not.” But now I realize his question is rhetorical. He’s making a point.
“Obviously this planet—this part of it, anyway—is short on caves. And the guards don’t let us dig dens into the ground, because—”
“Because the tourists would have no way to observe you, in a home of your own construction.”
“That is the conclusion I’ve drawn, yes.” He gives me a grim nod. “So, no, this enclosure is not an exact replica of the conditions on Fetoja. At least, not the area my parents came from. Not even close.”
“I’m sorry.”
He makes a non-committal sound, deep in his throat. “I’m sure my parents only told me the good things. I'm sure they chose not to remember the hardships and the misfortune, because what would be the point in maligning the planet they loved? A planet they never saw again. A planet their children will never be able to call home?”
God. “I’m so sorry, Lohr."
"You have nothing to be sorry for."
Technically, he’s right. I just graduated from college, and I haven’t actually started the job waiting for me, at my family’s corporation. The corporation that runs this place. Yet I’ve never felt more guilty in my life. “Still, I am sorry,” I tell him.
Lohr stops walking to look down at me, the sun shining in his golden eyes, turning his pupils into slim vertical lines. “I’m sorry someone put you here too.”
A fissure opens in my heart, and a little of my soul leaks out.
He starts walking again, and I do my best to keep pace with him, but even I can tell that my steps are almost comically noisy, compared to his. So
on, I hear the first trickle of water from nearby, and I realize that my mouth is terribly dry.
We fill our large pouches at the edge of a cold, clear stream, and Lohr shows me how to tie them off with strips of leather cord. Then he gestures for me to kneel next to him as he picks a handful of what looks like a beautiful, feathery pink moss, with an entirely different texture than the one he showed me before. “Memorize the features of this plant,” he says as he sets a clump of it in my cupped palms. “Note the color. If it’s paler than this, it is immature and will be ineffective. If it is darker than this—more like a true red—it is too aged and will irritate your skin.”
“Got it. So…what are we doing with it?”
“Watch.” He holds a clump of the moss in his hands and dips them in the water, then he rubs his hands together, with the moss between them. A light, fragrant lather forms. When he has enough of it, he drops the moss on the ground and continues to wash his hands with the lather.
“That smells so good.” Like lavender, with a hint of cherry. I dip my own hands into the cold water and lather the moss, just like he showed me. The lather is thin—more like hand soap than like shampoo—and I have to trust him that it’s actually doing its job, because there is no astringent scent to tell me that I’m killing bacteria.
Obviously, this method of cleaning has worked for his people since, like, the beginning of time. I just hope it won’t have any unforeseen effects on me.
I would hate to discover that I’m allergic to alien soap.
“Is it safe to drink this water?” Considering that we just filled four large pouches. “Or do we have to boil it?”
“I brought you here because it’s safe to drink here. The source of this stream is just up there.” He points uphill, to where the water seems to be bubbling up from a rocky point in the ground. “So, this is the cleanest source. “I bathe downstream, of course.”
“Got it.” Although at the moment, I can hardly imagine bathing in a stream.
As I wash my hands, I can sense him watching me. His attention feels like standing in warm sunlight. As if it touches every exposed bit of me. I turn my head, and our gazes meet. His focus seems to intensify until it burns through me, sending points of heat like scattershot throughout my body to burn in sensitive places.
There’s something about him. I mean, he’s nothing like the human men I’ve known, and I’m not just talking about his massive, golden-down covered body, or his poof of mane-like hair, or his gorgeous golden cat-eyes. Or that tail, which tends to swish behind him in a sometimes irregular rhythm I can’t quite interpret.
What captivates me is that he’s direct and open about his attraction. About what he wants. There’s something so refreshing about that.
I turn back to the soap on my hands before he can see what I’m thinking. What I’m feeling. What my body is hoping for, while my mind shouts at me to quit being an idiot.
In this moment, bathed in warm sunlight with the soothing sound of water tripping over stones in the creak… With the pleasant scent of the moss-soap seducing my sense of smell… It would be easy for me to mistake the reality of the situation. To forget that I was kidnapped in my sleep and dropped into the lap of a man who—despite all his refreshing honesty and kindness—is capable of ripping me limb from limb.
I don’t know why Lohr isn’t like the others of his species. The ones who very nearly killed me when I was a child. Maybe he is, and I just haven’t seen that side of him yet. But despite my body’s apparent determination to like him and my obvious dependence upon him, I can’t afford to truly trust him. I cannot let my guard down.
We head back through the woods toward his hut with our four large pouches of clean water, and with them full, I can only manage one. He carries the other three without breaking a sweat. And again, I’m reminded that he doesn’t need me. For anything.
And he doesn’t seem to believe that I can actually repay his kindness, which means he’s helping me simply because I need help. I don’t know how to process that fact. His behavior so far is at odds with what I know to expect from members of his species. Is he an anomaly, or will I trigger violence from him somewhere down the line and have no idea what caused the change?
I need to know if there’s a psychological landmine out there somewhere, just waiting to be stepped on. And the only way I know of to find that out is to probe carefully. “So, how did you learn about that soap moss…stuff?”
“How does anyone learn anything?” he replies. “Knowledge is passed down.”
“From your parents?”
“And my brother. And the rest of the community.”
The community. “Where is this community? Your species aren’t loners, are they?” That does not fit with my memory of my time here before. I was attacked by a pack of Fetoji.
“No, we typically live in small family groups, which come together to trade.”
“For things like your clay jars?”
“And for meat, and hides, and vegetables. For anything one person has want of, while another has excess.”
“Where is your family?”
Lohr turns to me, and for a second, I think he’s not going to answer. That I’ve become too nosy. That maybe I found that landmine. “My parents have passed,” he says at last. “Long ago. My older brother still lives in our childhood home, about half an hour’s walk through the woods.” He points in a direction I can’t name. I have no sense of navigation on this planet.
“I’m sorry. But that’s not what I… I mean, it can’t be easy to be out here all alone. You have no…wife?”
“Mate.” He rubs his forehead with a pained-looking frown. Which, I’ve come to realize, means he has access to a word in English that he has no personal reference for. “Fetoji do not marry, in the human sense of the word. But we mate for life, when we do choose to commit. And no, I do not have one. I do not want one.”
“Why not? Presumably a Fetoji mate would be more helpful to you than I am. And she’d be…um…company.” For that ever-hard cock, as well as to literally warm his bed. “And—”
“Mates come with children.”
I blink at him. “And you’re, like, allergic to kids?”
He stops walking, and the look he gives me skewers deep into my soul. “I like children very much. Those I’ve met, anyway. But this is no place for children.”
6
Syrie
Lohr starts walking again, leaving me to catch up. But for the moment, my feet are frozen in place.
His fears for any children he might have are not about predators, like the ezaki. Or about other members of his species.
He’s talking about me and my kind. About the humans who put him here and gave him everything he needs to survive, yet denied him everything he needs in order to truly live.
Lohr doesn’t say anything else on the walk back to his hut. He doesn’t even look at me. He just marches through the front door and arranges his three heavy water pouches on a shelf. Then he turns to take mine from me.
I sigh as he relieves me of the burden. My arms ache from carrying it, even over such a short distance.
“Humans are weak,” he says as he sets that last pouch on the shelf. As insulting as his declaration sounds, I get the feeling that he’s just stating facts, as he understands them.
I huff. “Don’t judge us by our least capable specimen.”
Lohr pulls a basket down from another shelf. “Humanity should be so lucky, to have you as the standard by which all others are judged. You’re the only one I’ve ever met who displayed an ounce of kindness or gratitude.”
Warmth floods my chest at his heartfelt compliment, but it is immediately doused by a cold wash of guilt. I don’t deserve his kind words. “Have you known many others?” I’m not sure how that would be possible.
“None,” he admits. “Other than you, every human I’ve had contact with was a customer or an employee of the park. They were all either people who paid to come ‘observe’ me or who are paid to keep
me here.”
Guilt twists in my gut. Without the tour pods rolling past—down here where you can’t see the barrier dividing this bio-dome from the others—it’s easy to forget that this is an enclosure. That I haven’t simply been stranded on an independent alien planet.
“What are those?” I ask as I peer into his basket, eager to change the subject.
“Tubers and root vegetables. For the stew.” He opens the pouch I carried and pours some water into a large clay bowl, then he begins to wash vegetables one at a time and set them on the small wooden table. His hut is narrow enough that he can reach the table without taking a single step.
“May I help? Are we going to chop them?”
“Yes.” I’m not sure which question he’s answering, but he sets a rough metal knife with a leather-wrapped handle on the table next to the growing pile of vegetables. “Cubes. Not too big, or they’ll take forever to cook through.”
So I begin cutting. Some of the roots are a deep purple. Others are orange, yellow, or a soft green, and they come in shapes ranging from the slender spike shape of a carrot to a fat, round onion-like bulb. I wonder if these plants are authentic to Fetoji, or if they, too, are an approximation of what would be found on his homeworld.
I set the stalks and leaves aside and work on making even cubes. “I’ve never seen vegetables like these.”
“Why would you have?” Lohr glances at my work, and he looks…impressed. Or at least not disappointed. “This is not your first time chopping vegetables.”
“Why do you sound so surprised by that?” I mean, anyone who really knows me would be surprised; my family has always employed personal chefs. But Lohr has no reason to know that.
“I was under the impression that humans delegate the unpleasant tasks in their lives to machines.”
The Lion and the Mouse Page 6