by R. Lee Smith
She was spared having to answer by the sound of voices below. Keys jingled. Footsteps splashed through the rain. Car doors opened and closed; engines growled to life. Doru watched them pull out of the parking lot and off down the street. “That’s the last of them,” he said, and crossed over to the roof access door.
She expected him to snap this one open the way he’d done at the birthing center, or, for that matter, at High Hill Apartments. Instead, to her surprise, he opened up his belt pouch and removed an oddly-shaped tool of some sort: a strip of metal, perhaps two inches wide and twice as long, very thin, with a hook-shaped hilt wrapped in leather. It wasn’t new, and by the look of it, it had seen a lot of use.
Doru gave the doorknob a jiggle, then, keeping his grip on the knob, deftly inserted the metal strip just below the lockplate and gave it a swift, upwards jerk. The door popped open.
So did Olivia’s mouth.
He glanced back at her as he returned the tool to his belt-pouch, and grinned at her expression. “Bam, as my Tobi would say.”
“Where did you learn to do that?”
“Oh, we’ve always done it,” he replied airily. “It doesn’t work so much anymore, though. But that’s another reason I like this place. Come on.”
Olivia followed him down the dark stairwell and stopped at the bottom to let him lean out into the dimly-lit hall for a sniff and a cautious look around. His ears turned, pricked forward, then relaxed. “All clear. Let’s go.”
Olivia stepped out into a carpeted hall. She could see the dim evening lights of the store at the end of the corridor, and directly across from her were two bathrooms, an employee’s lounge consisting of a weathered couch and a card table, two vending machines and a water fountain. Slowly, almost overwhelmed by the novelty of it, she crept up and pushed the button for a stream of cold water.
“So that’s what that is!”
Olivia pinned her hair back with one hand and drank. The water was very cold, and tasted oddly stale after all the mineral-rich water of the mountain.
“Let me try it.” Doru nudged her out of the way and hunkered down awkwardly around the fountain. He took the first spray right in the eye, but caught the second in his open mouth. He made a game attempt to lap at it, then withdrew and shook his upper body violently. “I’ll have to practice at that. Say, is this the same as those white ones?” He aimed a thumb back at the bathroom.
“No. Those are for…for using in place of wastewater canals.”
He blinked at her. “That isn’t very sanitary,” he said slowly. “The water doesn’t go anywhere.” He looked back at the restroom door, frowning. “No wonder it smells so bad in there.”
“I think I should show you.” She squeezed past him and went into the men’s room. She waited until he was behind her, then reached out and pushed the handle on the nearest urinal.
He jumped back, his wings slamming into the stalls, and stared as water poured down and flushed itself away. “Damn, look at that!” He glanced thoughtfully at the stall, peered over the top of it and said, “Same principle?”
“Yep.”
“That’s amazing.” He turned and examined his reflection in the mirror, then looked down at the sinks. “Same here?”
“No, Doru, those are for washing up in afterwards.”
He poked at the faucet experimentally, then managed to turn the hot water tap. He offered the very tip of his finger to the trickle that emerged and his face lit up. “Hey, it’s warm! Ouch, it’s hot!”
Olivia slipped under his wing and stood in front of the second sink. She turned both knobs until she had a full, warm flow, then pushed at the soap dispenser and held the resulting pink goo up for him to sniff.
Doru grinned, adjusted the temperature at his sink, banged out three or four good squirts of soap and lathered himself up to the elbow. He washed his hands with unfeigned enthusiasm, then sniffed his pelt and snapped his teeth at his reflection. He started to shake himself dry again and she raised both his eyebrows by cranking out some paper towels and handing them over.
He rubbed at his pelt tentatively, reached past her to take a few more, then crumpled up the whole damp mess and put them carefully in the sink.
Laughing, Olivia fished them out again and put them in the trash.
“Bam,” he murmured, peering through the metal flap at the rest of the trash. “Fucking bam.”
“Come on, let’s go shopping.”
He backed away from the sink reluctantly and followed her out into the hallway. “First,” he said, “we find new packs. We can always use new packs. You go get the…whatever it is that Tina wants. I’ll meet you back by the meat.” He trotted off, claws clacking primly on the linoleum.
Olivia moved cautiously around the registers to the pharmacy at the front of the store. She half-expected that the needles would be in the back, locked up tight with the other medications, and was surprised to find a display of them on the shelf in front of the pick-up window. She opened her pack and tossed the entire box inside, then helped herself to a glucosamine monitor, six boxes of strips, a digital thermometer, three bottles of pregnancy-formulated vitamins, and one big bottle of aspirin. On her way to find Doru, she also added a double handful of every kind of battery she thought they could use.
Doru was wandering down the souvenir aisle, and looking for all the world like a conscientious consumer with his huge hiking pack slung over one arm. He held out his hand absently and looked astonished at the weight of the pack when she gave it to him. “What did you get? A bag of rocks?”
“Too heavy for you?”
He frowned at her. “Hardly. Here,” he added, opening his own pack for her approval. “I found some human coverings. Are they suitable?”
Olivia rifled through a haphazard jumble of quilted vests, sweatshirts, and hoodies that said things like ‘Welcome to ARLITTLE. It’s Effin Cold Here.’ and ‘Inupiaq Pride’. “Fine,” she said.
“Good. I wasn’t sure. I also got some timepieces for your humans. Most of theirs are broken now.” He zipped the pack shut and shouldered it. “What next?”
Olivia was about to lead him towards the grocery section when a dark neon sign caught her eye and she swung back. “How about a new disc for Liz’s radio? I don’t know about you, but I’m about through with Ricky Martin.” Olivia jogged down the aisle to Entertainment and knelt down in front of the display of CDs.
“That doesn’t look like the thing the box takes,” Doru remarked, eyeing the square case dubiously. “I don’t think it’ll even fit.”
“You need to trust me more, Doru.” Olivia picked one of each of the best-sellers and stuffed them in her already-bulging backpack.
“That’s enough,” he said firmly. “Let’s get some food so the night isn’t a total loss. And remember, you still owe me a box of thumperjuice. This way.”
As they neared the coolers and banks of frozen foods, Olivia became aware of the hum of machinery for the first time. It reminded her of something so she stopped, trying to puzzle it out.
Doru glanced back at her, then at the nearest freezer, then grinned at her. “Listen to that! All of them desperate to mate with something!”
Olivia giggled, clapping a hand over her mouth. That was exactly what they sounded like, a gullan thrumm, in an electronic way.
Doru uttered a low, toneless impersonation of the mechanical hum, then chuckled and opened the cooler to fish out a six-pack of Coors beer.
Olivia moved past him, opening her last backpack, and began to fill it with pork roasts, working her way down the aisle until she ran out of room and had to go find Doru.
He was waiting for her by the checkout lane with his backpack straps over his arm, eating pepperoni strips out of the cashier-station jar.
“Done?” she asked, amused.
“Done.” He took a few pepperonis for the road, then walked her to the rear of the store. He sent her up the stairs ahead of him while he returned to the office and plugged the monitors back in. When he joined her a
gain, she was standing at the edge of the roof, looking out at a sea of moving lights. It had stopped raining, and the moon looked down at them, half full in the sky.
Doru stretched hugely, flapped his wings several times, then began the arduous task of adjusting the bulging backpacks until he thought he could carry them and her at the same time. “The thumperjuice will have to ride between us,” he explained. “But that’s all right. Hold on to me.”
She clamped onto his neck and he wedged the beer between them. “I’m not too heavy, am I?” she asked worriedly.
He cocked an eye at her. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
She looked around at the three packs hanging from his arms, then back at him and jiggled a little as he prepared to jump from the ledge. “You’re sure I’m not too heavy?”
“Very sure, but you can do that again if you want to.” He took her by the waist, leapt out into space and dropped like a stone.
She had just time enough to shriek before he leveled out a good two feet over the pavement and arched up into the air, laughing.
“Joke!” he shouted. “Just a joke! Sorry!” He tried unsuccessfully to dodge a slap to the side of his head and aimed himself for the mountain. “Ouch! Don’t hit me! Ouch! I said I was sorry!”
She subsided, glowering at him.
He coasted along in the cool air for a long time in silence, and then grinned at her again. “Heh. Well, it’s easy to see where your Somurg gets his sweet disposition. Ouch!”
3
Karen came weeping into the commons one week later.
She was not crying in a very feminine fashion, with delicate tears and little sniffles. She brayed like a donkey, and all of her face, part of her hair and most of her shirt was covered with damp secretions of some form or another. Moaning and sobbing and glaring at everything with misery-slick, swollen red eyes, Karen staggered as far as the flat rock in the center of the cavern and just stood there, looking at them.
“Karen?” Bodual came a cautious step away from the small band of males who had returned from checking traps and now were waiting for Doru’s command to hunt. He had his hands out, open and empty, as if it were a feral dog he were trying to coax to him and not his estranged mate.
Karen looked at him. Her tears subsided.
“Are you all right?” Bodual asked.
She dragged her sleeve across her eyes, and looked at him some more.
Bodual sent Olivia a worried, baffled glance. They hadn’t had much time together since their mutual encounter in the grip of Olivia’s new-born power, and what few meetings they’d had were purely platonic ones, but they’d almost certainly exchanged more words than he and Karen had. Oh, she occasionally got bored enough sitting around the mythical Augurr’s lair that she came out to the women’s tunnels to do a chore or two, and she could usually be found in the commons in the late afternoon, sitting with Carla and Crugunn to gossip, but she wasn’t friendly. Even Liz, who had been her roommate ‘before’ seldom saw her these days, and Bodual, her abductor, rarely got more than a scathing glance and an insult out of her, even when he brought her a share of his kills. Now that she needed comforting…he clearly had no idea what to say.
Karen’s wet eyes began to burn. Her sniffing stopped. She looked at him, looked at all of them.
And then she exploded.
Gullan scrambled back before the fury of the shrieking, slapping storm that suddenly tore through them. Males grabbed whatever human was nearest and leapt up the wall. Females dropped whatever chore had been occupying their hands and did likewise. Olivia seized Somurg at the same time she was herself yanked into space, right as Karen started throwing things, starting with a clay jug full of water that hit the wall right where Olivia had been sitting. It detonated, soaking her right side and giving her a smack to the temple with a large shard just hard enough to scratch the skin.
A gullan hand caught her arm; Bodual’s anxious face filled her vision. She felt his thumb prod at her forehead and then he looked beyond her, at Sudjummar. “I swear, I didn’t do this.”
Karen finished emptying the fuel bin, found an iron poker and was striking sparks off the walls, floor, and anything foolish enough to cross her. She overturned a bench. She broke six inches off another. She heaved the poker into the far wall, grabbed a cinder shovel and started flinging live coals out of the fire and across the room. All the while, she screamed and screamed with rage.
Olivia finally realized she was hanging in Sudjummar’s arms thirty feet off the floor, and that every pair of eyes that was not on Karen was on her. Oh shit, she thought, disgusted and a little afraid. Aloud, she said, “Take the baby and put me down.”
“Have you lost your mind?” Sudjummar asked mildly.
“I have to. Put me down.”
He began to edge down the wall, came within six feet, and just dropped her the rest of the way. Olivia dodged a burning chunk of wood, watched Sudjummar leap back out of reach, and then looked at Karen, who was now using the cinder shovel to knock a good-sized hole into the hearth.
Damn it.
Olivia walked directly up to her, took the shovel out of her hands, and then slapped her soundly across the face.
Karen fell over as though Olivia had shot her in the head, and went back to weeping.
“Stop it right now,” Olivia said in her hardest voice. “Get up.”
Karen swiped at her eyes, lifted herself to her knees, and surveyed the cavern with froggy, swollen eyes. She cast a single, flinching glance up at Olivia, then glued her gaze to the backs of her hands and just hunched there.
“I mean it, goddamn it,” Olivia said, in English. “You could have killed someone. Just what the hell did you think you were doing?”
“He left me,” Karen said bleakly.
“Who, Bodual?” Olivia asked, blinking up at the wall where Karen’s mate looked just as confused as she was. Why on Earth Bodual’s leaving should either surprise or bother Karen, since she’d been living all this time with—
“Augurr!” Karen wailed, and burst into tears again.
Above them, someone snorted. Olivia threw a withering glance upward that she hoped included everyone, then hauled Karen up to her feet.
“What about Augurr?” she asked, then glared at the other gullan again. “Would somebody please get down here and start cleaning this up?”
“I’ve been living with him for months,” Karen sobbed. “Ever since we got here! He said he loved me. He said he’d make me his mate. He said that!”
Olivia looked up again. Bodual turned his face into the wall, his back stiff against the sidelong glances and rolling eyes of the other men around him.
“He lied to me!” Karen shouted. “I found him in my pit with Carla! He said he loved me and he was fucking Carla! She’s supposed to be my friend!”
“What did you do?” Olivia asked warily.
“I kicked them apart and tried to claw his eyes out, what do you think I did?” she snarled, and fell to sobbing again. “Now he says he doesn’t love me and he never did. He threw my things out! He…He dumped me!”
Olivia caught Bodual’s eye while Karen wept. It wasn’t easy to do. His head was bent, embarrassed, hiding from the scornful stares of the other gullan. When he did ultimately meet her gaze, it was with an awkward, plaintive look of his own. Short of saying out loud, ‘Please, don’t make me take her back,’ he could not have been more clear.
Damn it.
“Thurga,” Olivia said, and sighed. “Take her to the women’s tunnels for now. I guess I’d better go sort this out.”
She waited, but no one jumped in with any arguments and so she left.
Olivia had worked up an excellent head of steam by the time she reached the fabled quarters of the tribal eunuch. She knew exactly where to go. She’d never even met the man, but enough females had visited and gossiped about him for her to have a perfect map in her mind. If she needed validation, there were Karen’s belongings strewn below the chute to his lair; she stepped over the
m and spiked her way up and into the smallish cave he occupied.
A single candle burned from a natural shelf on the far wall, illuminating her surroundings just enough to show her the rich furs and soft bedding of Augurr’s pit, the finely-woven basket holding the foods that his many admirers brought him, and of course, the man himself, if only in silhouette. He sat on a bench, chewing on a hunk of bread and flipping through a Playboy, and he didn’t bother to look up when she approached him.
He was not, she thought, a handsome gulla, but he was an imposing one—not necessarily in his physique, which was light and lean like Kodjunn’s, but in his bearing—and his confidence certainly added to his undeniable charisma. Even now, as he ignored her in the aftermath of Karen’s meltdown, she suspected that women would flock to him even if he weren’t an eunuch.
And there was something familiar about him. Something…she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
Augurr evidently decided she wasn’t going away until he told her to. “If this is about Karen, I’m not interested in discussing it with you,” he said.
“Well, I intend to discuss it with you anyway. Do you have any idea the state she’s in right now?”
He snorted, still perusing Miss February, 2001. “I’ve lived with her long enough. I can imagine.”
His utter indifference threw her. He wasn’t acting casual. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t defensive or guilty. If anything, he was very mildly annoyed, but at Olivia’s confronting him, not Karen. Her own temper began to rise, as if to compensate.
“If you’ve lived with her this long, don’t you think she deserved better than the way you chose to end it?”
“Why? She’s not my mate.”
“She says you promised to claim her for one.”
He shrugged, turned a page. “Some women need promises.”
She stared at him for a few seconds, unable to believe he could say that with such a complete lack of concern. Her fist balled. She looked down at it, forced it open, unfastened her climbing claws, then balled it again and punched Augurr right in the face.
He fell backwards over the bench with a yelp and sprawled in the pit, kicking wildly until he caught enough leverage to push himself up on his elbows. He stayed there, one hand at his snout, staring at her.