Bonded in Space

by Trisha McNary

  Eegor looked in the salon. There was Apostrophe Eeeepp getting her nails and toes painted by two lightly furred alien females. He looked in the spa. There was Pooquali getting massaged by two reptilian types!

  “This is not working!” Eegor said out loud to the empty room. “I don’t know why being around those females gives me such terrible headaches, but sitting here alone all day is almost worse. Almost.”

  He remembered the last headache and shuddered, ruffling his perfect ice-blonde hair.

  What is wrong with these females? he wondered. I never had this problem with Earth females or Tilde, who was part Earthling anyway. Aren’t there any Earth females on this blasted planet?

  Eegor’s thoughts turned to Antaska. Where was she now? Was it a mistake to give up the hunt for her so easily. Maybe it was time to leave this place and go after her again. It sounded like a good enough reason to leave anyway.

  He turned on the microphone to speak first to Pooquali and then Apostrophe in the each of the rooms they were in.

  “When you’re finished in there, I need you to come in here and talk to me about something,” he said.

  After he spoke, both Eeeepps had the same reaction. They each waved a hand at the view screen and said, “in a while, in a while.”

  “Humph!” Eegor muttered. “They used to be a lot more responsive when I asked for something. Not good. Not good.”

  With a scowl breaking the perfect lines of his sculpted face, he slouched back in his chair to wait for the Eeeepps.

  Chapter 14

  Central Planet…

  A chime sounded at the residence door. M. Hoyvil saw Antaska hop down from the couch to answer it.

  “No!” he shouted.

  He rushed around her with superhuman speed to get there first. Wawuul got to the door at the same time. M. Hoyvil looked through the spy hole at his eye height, but he didn’t see anyone.

  So it’s not a Verdante, he thought.

  He bent down and looked through another hole in the door at Antaska’s height. Still no one.

  “Is anyone out there?” he shouted telepathically through the door.

  There was no answer. The door was soundproof, so he wouldn’t have been able to hear if someone was talking out loud or yelling.

  Then a picture came into his mind from Wawuul. A short being with a humanoid body and a terrier’s head. Wearing a police uniform and holding up a badge but standing too far below the spy hole to see.

  “Are you sure?” M. Hoyvil asked Wawuul.

  The big cat lifted a paw and waved it, gesturing for M. Hoyvil to open the door. M. Hoyvil placed his palm on a plate to open it, and it rose up slowly.

  “Well that took you long enough,” a gruff male voice said from outside the door before it was up more than a few feet.

  M. Hoyvil and Wawuul stood back to let the small police officer enter.

  “Good evening,” said the dog man out loud. He looked up at M. Hoyvil and then up at Antaska, who stood close by. “I’m inspector Gaarvis.”

  “Wawuul,” he said, nodding his furry head at the orange-striped cat.

  Wawuul tipped his big head sideways with a questioning look on his expressive face.

  “Am I correct that you are M. Hoyvil from the Verdante planet, and you are Antaska from Earth?” he asked each of the humanoids in turn.

  “That’s right,” said M. Hoyvil. “And this is Potat from Earth.”

  M. Hoyvil waved a big six-fingered hand at little Potat. She stood up on all four legs on the high couch and glared down at the inspector. Inspector Gaarvis looked up at her and nodded.

  “Yes. I’m here about the violent incident at the university today,” said the inspector. He fixed a beady eye on Antaska. “What do you know about that?” he asked her.

  Wawuul growled deep in his throat, but Antaska said to him telepathically, “It’s OK, Wawuul. I’ll tell him everything I know. Isn’t he telepathic?”

  The cat shook his head.

  “Well?” the terrier man demanded. “I’m waiting.”

  “Sorry,” said Antaska. “Right. I think someone was trying to kill me today. Do you know who?”

  “Do you know?” asked the inspector.

  “Could it have been the Woogahs?” she asked.

  “I’ll ask the questions here,” the dog man barked back at her.

  Potat hissed at him from up on the couch.

  “Cats!” he said in an exasperated voice. “Anyway, it was not the Woogahs,” he answered Antaska’s question after all. “Our investigators have found evidence on students’ electronic devices. A group of students organized this attempt on your life.”

  M. Hoyvil’s big slanted eyes lifted.

  “But why?” asked Antaska.

  The heads of the two cats turned back and forth to watch each of the speakers.

  “I’ll tell you why,” Inspector Graavis answered. “Central Planet University has students from all over the galaxy. And those students are friends and relatives of the females who are now enslaved on the Woogah planet. They’re angry at you because you escaped from the Woogahs, but you left all the others there.”

  “That’s not true!” M. Hoyvil defended her. “She asked them to come with us, but they refused. Only two were willing to leave.”

  “Well you say that, but no one believes it,” said the inspector. “Everyone we talked to thinks you’re lying about that. They think she just saved her own skin, and you took off. So now both of your lives are probably in danger. As well as the buildings and infrastructure of this city if these people keep throwing bombs at you.”

  “Is that all you care about?” M. Hoyvil asked. “Don’t you see how astronomically dangerous this situation could be?”

  The terrier waved his furry hands in front of himself in protest.

  “Yes, the natives of Central Planet understand this. Don’t put down my species. You space farers are the ones who interrupted our natural evolution by contacting us and giving us space travel before we were ready,” said the inspector.

  “Well, that wasn’t me personally,” said M. Hoyvil.

  M. Hoyvil knew the history of Central Planet. More than a million years ago, before telepathic space-faring humanoids knew better, they’d revealed themselves to the natives without studying them first. Because of its convenient location in the center of the known galaxy, members of many species had settled here. They established a unified government, which was administrated by Central Planet’s non-telepathic natives.

  After that, for some reason, the planet’s natives never achieved telepathy. But they attempted to make themselves telepathic by mixing their humanoid genes with two other native species believed to be telepathic: felines and canines. The end result was the two distinct semi-humanoid races the now existed on Central Planet—non-telepathic part-dog humanoids and part-cat humanoids like Wawuul who were telepathic in a different way. M. Hoyvil had seen the dog people before when he was in court, but Wawuul was the first of the native cats he’d seen.

  The dog man spoke again. “No, we don’t want people to get killed on our planet. We’ll conduct a thorough investigation, but we want you to leave. For your own safety and for the safety of our planet.”

  “We’d love to leave, but where would we go?” asked M. Hoyvil. “And how would we get there? We don’t have a space ship.”

  “I know,” said Antaska. “We can go back to the Woogah planet and rescue all those women. Then no one can say that we abandoned them.”

  “No! No!” Potat shouted telepathically.

  “Maybe. I don’t know. I guess it would be better than staying here,” said M. Hoyvil. “I don’t know how we could get them to leave though. They didn’t want to before, but I guess we could try.”

  “We have to try!” said Antaska. “He’s right. I’ve been feeling guilty about leaving them all this time. But how would we get there?”

  “I can help you with that,” said the inspector. “There are plenty of Verdante space ships parked at the s
pace port here. This young man is a Verdante, so he can pilot one of them. You can just pick the one you like and take it,” he said to M. Hoyvil.

  “What!” said M. Hoyvil. “I can’t just take someone’s space ship. That’s stealing.”

  “No. It won’t be stealing,” said the inspector. “I’ll go with you, and we’ll ask the owner’s permission for you to take their ship. I’m sure they won’t mind. The Verdantes who stay here wait for hundreds of years for their court cases to finish. And their space ships sit docked for hundreds of years too. They’re not using them. You can borrow one and bring it back when you’re done. They’ll probably appreciate your taking their ship out so it doesn’t get rusty.”

  “If you think that, you really don’t know anything about Verdante adults,” said M. Hoyvil. “But OK, I’ll try it.”

  Potat spoke up from the couch. “I’ll come along to protect you in case any bad people show up,” she told M. Hoyvil mentally.

  “OK. I can’t refuse that offer,” he said.

  M. Hoyvil walked back across the enormous room to the couch and scooped up the tiny cat. He placed her in the usual carrying place, his jacket pocket.

  “Let’s go,” he said out loud to Inspector Graavis.

  Potat stood up in M. Hoyvil’s pocket and stared at the line of Verdante space ships parked in a long row in the outdoor Central Planet space port. The nearest ships were almost disintegrated. Enormous Verdante trees grew out of them with their huge roots planted deep into the ground.

  A loud telepathic sound from the trees entered Potat’s mind. “Ccccaaaaaaa…”

  She could hear and understand the one word per hour language of the sentient Verdante trees, and she was annoyed.

  “I’m not sticking around here for hours waiting to hear whatever you’ve got to say,” she told them. But Potat didn’t know if the trees could actually understand her much faster mental talk.

  “How do you think we’re going to fly in these things?” M. Hoyvil asked the non-telepathic inspector out loud.

  “It won’t be a problem. The oldest ones are on this end,” the dog-man explained. “Some of them have been here for 500 years or more. Down at the other end are some newer ones that will still fly.”

  “Let’s take the newest one, wherever that is, and a big one,” said M. Hoyvil. “So we can take all of the females without having to put them in cold storage.”

  “Sure. Whichever you want,” agreed the inspector.

  It was a long way to the other end of the line. M. Hoyvil walked slower than normal, keeping pace with the shorter-legged dog man. The ships that didn’t have overgrown trees sticking out of them still had trees living inside them. Potat knew that the Verdante’s sub-light space travel depended on cooperation between the green aliens and their planet’s native trees.

  All along the way to the newest ships, the irritating trees continued to mentally shout in their collective voice the beginning of their word for cat. Potat rubbed her ears with furious paws, but the sound wouldn’t go away.

  Finally, they reached a large, round ship at the end.

  “Nice. A liner,” said M. Hoyvil. “Should hold about fifty Verdantes comfortably, or at least a hundred average-sized humanoids.”

  “So this is the one you want?” Inspector Graavis asked him.

  “Yes, but I doubt the Verdante owner is going to agree to this,” said M. Hoyvil.

  “We’ll see. We’ll see,” said the inspector.

  He fished an electronic device from his pocket and pointed it at the ship.

  “OK. I’ve got the owner’s location in the Verdante quarters. Follow me, please.”

  He waved a paw toward some small vehicles that floated at the edge of the road surrounding the space port.

  “If you don’t mind, I’ll ride from here,” said the dog man to M. Hoyvil. “It’s been a long walk for me. I’m sorry I don’t have a vehicle your size, but I’ll drive slow enough for you to keep up.”

  “That’s fine,” said M. Hoyvil. “I’m not tired at all.”

  The inspector hopped up into one of the small floating vehicles and patted the seat next to him.

  “You can ride along with me if you want to, kitty,” he said to Potat.

  She snarled at him, and he barked out a laugh.

  M. Hoyvil patted Potat’s head.

  “Let’s go!” he said.

  M. Hoyvil, with Potat in his pocket, stood next to the small dog inspector in front of a towering door to an adult Verdante residence. Inspector Graavis pressed the door’s chime. They waited a few minutes. The inspector pressed the chime again.

  This wait didn’t surprise M. Hoyvil. He knew adult Verdantes were never in a rush.

  Finally, the bottom of the door began to rise. The gigantic legs of two Verdantes came into view. When the tall door was all the way open, M. Hoyvil looked up at the two male Verdantes standing there—one with light green curly hair, and the other with darker green straight hair.

  The short dog man bent his furry head all the way backward and looked up at the two giants. M. Hoyvil lowered his head again to look past them. A small group of male and female Earthlings stood farther back in the vast room.

  The two big men looked down at M. Hoyvil, who was only eight feet tall. They didn’t seem to notice the much smaller inspector or Potat.

  “Who are you, and what do you want, young man?” one of them asked M. Hoyvil telepathically.

  “Please speak out loud,” M. Hoyvil told them mentally. “The inspector isn’t telepathic.”

  “I’m M. Hoyvil, this is Potat the cat, and this is Inspector Graavis of the Central Planet police department,” said M. Hoyvil out loud.

  He gestured at the others with a wave of a green hand.

  “Thanks for the introduction. I’ll take it from here,” said the gruff inspector. “May we enter?”

  With their huge slanted eyes wide, the two adult Verdantes moved aside to let M. Hoyvil and the inspector enter. M. Hoyvil waved over at the humans in the room, just to be polite.

  “Police department!” said one of the big Verdantes out loud. “What’s going on here?”

  “A serious interplanetary matter. Attempted murder and destruction of property!” the inspector answered. “But you can help us prevent further crimes and rescue the helpless victims of Woogah kidnappers.”

  “Of course. Of course. How can we help?” asked the light green-haired man.

  “This young man needs to borrow your ship to go to the Woogah planet. He’s going to attempt to rescue close to a hundred females of various races who are enslaved there,” said the inspector.

  The darker haired man sputtered mentally.

  “Insane! Preposterous!” both men said to M. Hoyvil telepathically.

  “I’m sorry, but no,” said the lighter haired man out loud to the inspector. “This adolescent is much too young to be trusted with a valuable space ship. He probably doesn’t even know how to fly it. What are you doing alone here on Central Planet without adult supervision anyway?” he asked M. Hoyvil.

  “I told you it would be like this,” said M. Hoyvil to Inspector Graavis.

  “Well, do you know how to fly a ship?” the dog man asked him.

  “Yes, I do,” said M. Hoyvil. “The crew of the Jalapeno taught me.”

  “Jalapeno!” the two adults sputtered mentally.

  Potat hissed at them and swiped a paw in their direction, but they didn’t seem to notice her.

  “Very good! Then it’s decided,” said the inspector. “M. Hoyvil can fly the ship, so I’m commandeering it by the authority of Central Planet security. Anyway, you’re not using it right now, and he’ll bring it right back when he’s done. Key please.”

  He held out a furry paw-like hand.

  Chapter 15

  Earth…

  “What do you mean, ‘Did I bond with her?’” M. Mort asked Lieutenant XoXo, who sat next to him on the enormous blue Verdante couch.

  “I mean the bond that sometimes forms betwee
n two different species when they adopt each other,” the lieutenant answered. “Like between Verdantes and Earth humans, or sometimes between humans and cats or dogs.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard people talk about that,” said M. Mort. “But I thought it was just a figure of speech. I thought it just meant they feel affection for the other species or become attached in some way. And then there’s the other kind of bond between two life mates, but I don’t think you’re talking about that one.”

  M. Mort felt a pinkish blush under his green skin.

  “No, I’m not talking about the mate bond. I’m talking about the other one. The friendship-affection bond. And it does mean what you think,” said XoXo. “But it also means a lot more than that.”

  “Like what?” asked M. Mort.

  XoXo explained. “No one really know why, but this bond is often formed when two different species meet for the first time. It’s just one of the mysteries of the universe, I guess. It happens when both of the beings feel immediate affection for each other. We believe that a change takes place at the subcellular level and at some other level we can’t detect or measure—maybe in the dark matter. We don’t know exactly how or why, but we know it happens.”

  M. Mort felt like he knew what she was talking about. He looked over at the other adult Verdantes to make sure they weren’t listening, but they were staring at each other with eye corners lowered. He heard the low hum of their angry telepathic conversation.

  A relieved sigh escaped him.

  “Anyway,” the tall woman continued, looking down with soft eyes at M. Mort. “Once this bond is formed, the two beings become companions for life. It’s unbreakable. If they become separated, they will both feel something inside them pulling in the direction of the other. Always.”

  “Wow!” said M. Mort.

  “Yes,” agreed the lieutenant. “So tell me, M. Mort. Do you think that you bonded with Pweet?”

  M. Mort dropped his head into his hands again.

  “I think I did!” he said. “Ever since I met Pweet, and then she left, I’ve felt this tugging feeling. At first, it pulled out in the direction where I last saw her walking. But now, it’s pointing straight up! So I need to go up too—after her. Will you take me with you? I can help you find her.”