Bonded in Space

by Trisha McNary

  The big orange-striped cat was slowly getting onto his overgrown feet with Antaska’s support.

  “No. I have to wait for that baby cat to get back. You know I can’t leave him in here by himself,” Potat answered.

  “Oh, right. I’m sorry. I keep forgetting about him because I’m so worried about Wawuul,” said Antaska.

  I think she’s getting too attached to this other cat, Potat thought. But I guess now isn’t the time to say anything or give her the silent treatment again.

  Wawuul began a slow limp in the direction of the exit with Antaska’s arm draped down around his neck.

  “Later, squirt,” said the annoying big oaf cat to Potat in the cat telepathic language.

  “Thanks for the help, big guy,” said Potat.

  She could be gracious at times when she felt like it.

  Chapter 37

  Marroo paced in restless circles in his residence. His plan had failed spectacularly, and Antaska was still on his mind. Now that he was on the same planet with her, the pull he felt toward her was stronger than ever. He could feel her in the direction of Nestgorm’s slave plant. The yearning to get even closer to her was almost irresistible.

  Should I go there and buy her from Nestgorm? he asked himself. But I’m a slave hunter. That’s unheard of. What reason would I give? I desire her? No! I can’t show such weakness! My reputation would be in tatters. Oh, that miserable female!

  Long hours had passed since Pweet left, but Marroo hadn’t done anything except walk in crazy circles arguing with himself about Antaska.

  I must leave this planet! he decided. Get far, far away from her where the pull won’t feel as strong. Like when I went to Earth. It eases with distance. Yes. I will travel to the far unexplored ends of known space like the other slave hunters. Fresh slaves are waiting there for me. That’s what I’ll do.

  But even as he made the decision, Marroo couldn’t bring himself to take the needed actions to leave. The strange pull was like a bond—not just keeping him in place but tugging at him to go to her.

  “This is insane!” he shouted telepathically to the empty room. “I must leave this planet! I will get in my ship and fly!”

  He fought the compulsion that kept him from going. But the bond was too strong. Until, all of a sudden, its strength lessened.

  Marroo didn’t know what had happened, but he quickly took advantage of it. He threw some belongings into a bag and ran out the door. As if hounds or giant cats were chasing him, Marroo rushed to his ship. He programed the path for the nearest space station, strapped in, and blasted off.

  The small craft took to the sky, and Marroo heaved a sigh of relief. He kept his ship well stocked with supplies to last him to the space station and beyond. In his line of work, one never knew when a quick exit might be needed.

  Deep inside him, the tugging feeling pulled and resisted—but in vain. Marroo had won this round.

  By the time I’m back in a hundred years or so, I’ll have forgotten all about that Earth female, Marroo told himself.

  Antaska had been feeling a similar strong pull toward Marroo’s residence ever since she’d arrived on the Woogah planet. She hadn’t told anyone. Not even Potat. If the others knew, they’d be very worried.

  In any case, it’s embarrassing to be so obsessed over such a terrible excuse for a humanoid, she told herself.

  But the feeling was strong and wouldn’t go away. At least the cats were a comfort. They made the endless unwanted feeling much easier to bear. Especially Wawuul who was always by her side, whereas Potat divided her time between Antaska and M. Hoyvil.

  Yet she gets upset when I get another cat! Antaska thought.

  Thinking about the cats distracted her from thoughts of Marroo. She was even more distracted when Potat and young Murrie went into the work plant disguised as cleaning bots. And then, when Wawuul got hurt, Antaska’s fear and concern for him seemed to weaken the pull toward Marroo. For just awhile, Antaska forgot Marroo and didn’t notice that odd feeling that had been inside her for so long.

  And when she got Wawuul back into the space ship, all settled in the med bay, Antaska finally noticed the feeling again. But it was smaller, less urgent, and distant.

  Marroo has left! she thought.

  She knew it for a certainty. The now smaller feeling throbbed in futile protest, but Antaska sighed with relief.

  Chapter 38

  Pweet opened her arms to Eegor. They leaned together and met in a warm hug on the edge of her enormous bed. He held one hand against her back and brushed the other through her hair. Pweet wrapped her arms round Eegor’s broad, muscular chest. Pressed up close against him, she listened to the slow, strong beat of his heart.

  Can this be really happening? Pweet wondered. It seems like a fantasy. After all the terrible things that have happened, have my dreams finally come true?

  For a while, there was no other sound in the room. Then Eegor spoke.

  “You’ve come back to me,” he said. “But will you leave me now? Someone’s come to rescue you. The Verdantes are here to take you. Will you go with them? Or will you stay with me?”

  “I want to stay with you,” said Pweet. “But do you really want me to stay? And for how long?”

  “Forever!” Eegor answered in a fierce, unhesitating voice. “That’s how long I want you to stay for. I love you. I told you that, but I don’t know if you heard me, so I’m telling you again. I’ve never felt like this about any other woman. Only you.”

  Pweet looked up at his face, and she believed what he was saying, but it still seemed incredible to her.

  “Being with you makes me feel so wonderful, I feel like singing,” said Eegor. “In fact, I just wrote a song in my head, and I want to sing it to you right now.”

  He looked down at Pweet. She giggled and nodded. Eegor took a deep breath and started his song.

  “You are the one, the only one. Forever, I will be with you…” he sang the words of his love song.

  His soft, deep voice was surprisingly melodious. To Pweet’s ear, it was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard. Tears dripped from her eyes and then began to flow.

  Eegor stopped singing and reached a hand to wipe the tears from her face. He tilted his face down toward her, and she lifted hers up. Their lips met in a gentle kiss.

  M. Mort watched with the rest of the Jalapeno crew when Pweet fell into Eegor’s arms. He sat still and calm on the outside, but mixed feelings swirled and confused him on the inside. Pweet was happy and safe now, and M. Mort wanted her to be happy. Murrie was happy too. But now it sounded like Pweet wouldn’t be leaving this planet, and Murrie would be staying here too.

  M. Mort hadn’t expected that. He’d grown fond of the little cat, who wasn’t so little now. Murrie had made him feel better when he was down. It kind of hurt, but M. Mort knew Murrie would stay with Pweet wherever she was.

  “Captain, should we fade the view to black now?” Lieutenant Sosha asked.

  Pweet and Eegor had just started their kiss.

  “No. Not this time,” said Captain Kamphone. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to interrupt those two love birds. Some rules have been broken here, and I’m going to have to step in and lay down the law. Can you route my voice into the plant’s audio system?”

  “Aye, aye, captain,” said Sosha.

  She turned to her computer console and typed.

  “Ready, captain,” she said.

  The captain picked up a microphone from his own console and spoke into it.

  “Attention. Attention. This is Captain Kamphone from the Verdante ship Jalapeno.”

  Eegor and Pweet broke their kiss and looked around with startled but befuddled faces. The alien females seen on the other view screens looked shocked too. M. Mort assumed they were talking or yelling telepathically. But the Jalapeno didn’t have any way to hear that since no cats were on board.

  The Jalapeno’s video showed Potat and Murrie sitting together near the Eeeepps. Those two lay on the ground tw
itching and moaning. Captain Kamphone spoke again.

  “Attention humanoids in this Woogah work plant. First of all, as the highest-ranking Verdante on this planet, I have some orders to deliver to you, Eegor. You’re part Verdante, and you were sentenced for a crime, but you left without serving your sentence. So I’m ordering you to come back with us.”

  “What! No!” Pweet said.

  She grabbed onto Eegor’s arm.

  “It’s OK,” said Eegor.

  But Pweet just held onto his arm tighter.

  “Now, I can’t come in there and force you out,” the captain continued. “But if you don’t come with me, you need to know that you’re in a precarious situation here. It’s only a matter of time before the Woogahs discover you on their planet. You’re breaking their laws too, and that could get ugly for you and anyone else who’s there with you.”

  “He’s right,” Eegor said to Pweet. “I need to finish serving the time I was given. What I did was terribly wrong, and it’s wrong for me not to take my punishment for it.”

  Pweet tucked her head onto his chest. M. Mort could see her trembling.

  This isn’t turning out at all like I expected, he thought. If she didn’t hate me before, she must hate me now.

  Eegor was talking to Pweet.

  “I’m sorry you won’t be able to keep this special room I made just for you, and we won’t be able to stay here living together in this beautiful place. I wanted you to have all this, but I can’t give it to you now. Because it was never mine to give.”

  “I don’t care about all this stuff,” Pweet answered. “All I care about is for us to be together. That promise that you just made. Does this mean it won’t happen now?”

  “No! We can still be together if you’ll wait for me,” said Eegor. “I’ll be on the Verdante planet for seventy-five years. I can talk to you on video. But I don’t expect you to stay there if you don’t want to.”

  “Of course I want to,” said Pweet. “But where could I stay?”

  “You can stay at my home,” M. Mort spoke up.

  “Who’s that?” said Pweet.

  Lieutenant Sosha channeled the view from inside the Jalapeno to a video screen on Pweet’s wall so she could see M. Mort.

  “It’s me, M. Mort,” he said.

  Pweet looked shocked to see him, but he kept talking.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t select you that day we met on Earth,” M. Mort apologized. “I was wrong to listen to that Earth administrator. I know a lot of the things that happened after that were probably my fault. That’s why I came along with these people on the Jalapeno to try to rescue you. And Murrie. You look like you’re OK. Are you?”

  “Yes, I’m fine,” said Pweet. “But you’re the one I’ve been the most mad at all this time. You and that administrator. It’s hard for me to just forget about what happened. And now I know that you Verdantes take humans for pets. I’m not a pet, and I won’t be treated like one.”

  “I don’t want you for a pet,” said M. Mort. “I made a promise to you—in sign language anyway—to take you, and then I didn’t. That was wrong, and I just want to make it up to you. I just want to give you a place to stay, but you can leave any time you want to. No one will bother you there. Some other Earthlings live there, but we don’t have any Eeeepps.”

  “I don’t know,” said Pweet.

  In one corner of the view screen, M. Mort saw something small and black come into the room. It was Murrie without his disguise. He dashed across the plush carpet, climbed up the side of the bed, and sat down right in front of Pweet.

  “Murrie!” said Pweet.

  It’s time for a cat to save the day again, thought Murrie.

  He looked up at Pweet and blinked at her, and she reached out a hand to pet the top of his head.

  “Hi Pweet,” he said telepathically, and she answered him in the same way.

  “Murrie. Thank you for coming to rescue me. And for taking me out of that trance. You’re my big, brave hero, Murrie.

  “I’m not the only one who came to rescue you,” said Murrie. “I know you’re mad at M. Mort, but I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him. I found him outside the Verdante building because he was thinking about you. He was thinking about how hard it would be to rescue you without a cat. So I went up to him and told him to take me along. I know you’re mad at him, but I ran away too, but you’re not mad at me.”

  “But you were just a kitten,” said Pweet. “I couldn’t get mad at you for being scared.”

  Murrie twisted his head and looked at the view screen that showed M. Mort. His big slanted eyes drooped. Murrie knew that meant he wasn’t happy.

  “Well, he’s just a young guy too, like me, and he didn’t know what to do. So he made a mistake. He’s not really a bad guy. I spent a lot of time with him on the ship. He’s OK,” said Murrie.

  Pweet looked down at the small cat and then up at M. Mort on the view screen.

  “He does look younger than the others,” said Pweet. “And maybe I feel a little less mad at him now, but I tried to kill Eegor because I was so mad at M. Mort. It won’t be that easy for me to just forgive him and then go live with him. Don’t you think that would be strange and hard for me?”

  Murrie moved closer to Pweet and climbed up onto her knee.

  “No. I don’t think that would be strange at all. It would be the most natural thing in the universe,” said Murrie.

  Pweet’s eyes squinted.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Remember when you first met him on Earth. Didn’t you bond with him just like you bonded with me? I don’t mean the kind of romantic bond you might have with Eegor here.”

  Murrie waved a black paw over at Eegor. The big part-Verdante man sat still and silent staring at Pweet with a dreamy look on his face. Murrie spoke to Pweet again.

  “I mean the way two beings of two different species meet for the first time and become instantly attached to each other. So attached that they spend the rest of their lives together. Didn’t you form that kind of bond with M. Mort?” Murrie asked her. “I think you did because I can tell that he formed that kind of bond with you, and it’s always mutual. It doesn’t work only one way. That’s why you were so mad at him. You felt the bond, and that made it even worse to be abandoned by him.”

  For a few moments, Pweet didn’t say anything. She reached down a hand and scratched behind Murrie’s ears, but her eyes were on M. Mort up on the screen.

  “You’re right,” said Pweet. “Maybe we did form that kind of bond, but he broke it.”

  “No,” said Murrie. “He made a big mistake and abandoned you, but you can’t break that kind of bond. That’s a forever bond. That’s why he had to come after you. And now the choice is yours. You have to choose if you’re going to abandon him too.”

  “But why shouldn’t I?” Pweet asked. “Maybe I’ll still feel some kind of loss if I’m not around him, but I’ve got Eegor and you to make up for that. Anyway, he says I won’t be a pet, he’ll treat me like a real person, but why do Earthlings need to be around the Verdantes anyway? Wouldn’t I feel more like a real person if I just stayed with my own kind?”

  Murrie squatted down on Pweet’s knee in the classic cat sphinx position and thought about what she’d just said. He decided that she needed to know some of the secret information that only cats know. Most cats were stingy with giving out this kind of information. But luckily, the other cats weren’t there to hear him telling. Especially that bossy cat Potat.

  He bent his neck back to look up at Pweet and spoke.

  “No. You’ll feel like less of a real person—less of a complete person—if you don’t stay with the Verdantes.”

  “Really?” Pweet sounded doubtful. “Why’s that?”

  “Because what you Earthlings don’t know, and what the Verdantes have forgot and don’t want to remember, is that a million years ago, the Verdantes were the ones who left Earth right before your apocalypse,” said Murrie.

  “H
ow do you know that?” asked Eegor, who was now paying attention to the telepathic conversation.

  Eegor’s curious grey-green eyes looked down at Murrie sitting on Pweet’s knee.

  “I know because cats were there, and cats keep better records than you humanoids do,” said Murrie. “That’s why the Verdantes were able to prove a genetic relationship to Earth humans. That should have given them a clue to the truth, but they don’t want to know the truth. They see themselves as superior to Earthlings, and they can’t face the fact that they’re really the same species.”

  “I can believe that,” said Eegor.

  “Anyway,” said Murrie, “that’s why the Verdantes are flawed and incomplete. Well, that’s one of the reasons. That’s why they add Earth human genes to their offspring to strengthen them, and that’s why they have problems traveling in space on their own. And the genetic makeup of Earthlings is lacking something too. That’s what makes them also so drawn to the Verdantes. Because your two species—which is really one species—needs to get itself back together in order to evolve forward. And if you don’t evolve forward, you go backward. Everyone knows that.”

  “But if the Verdantes are the same as us, why are they green and so much bigger, and why do they live so much longer?” Pweet asked.

  “The Verdantes are different than you because when they first arrived at their home planet as Earthlings, their bodies couldn’t digest the planet’s food sources,” said Murrie. “They had their own supplies and hydroponic gardens to grow food on their ships, but they knew that wouldn’t work in the long run as food for an expanding colony. So that’s when their geneticists spliced tree genes into their next generations of offspring.”

  After that explanation, both Pweet and Eegor were silent for a while. The Verdantes watching on the screen, although not able to hear the telepathic conversation, had been silent too the whole time Murrie had been talking. But that was normal for Verdantes, Murrie knew. They often sat thinking or whatever they were doing for long periods of time, just like the trees whose genes they’d added to their own.