“That was so embarrassing!” Antaska said. “And I heard you say that you knew I was in there, but you were still talking about me. That’s not right.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Antaska. Don’t be mad at me. It’s just my sense of humor. But I know you won’t understand. You won’t ever know what it’s like to be stuck on this planet for hundreds of years,” said Freeta.
“You’re right. I don’t understand,” said Antaska. “And you were saying bad things about me and laughing at me!”
“Now, Antaska. I had to do that because Totanna was there. To make her happy, so she’ll be my friend,” said Freeta. “I didn’t mean any of that, and I want to be your friend too. That’s why I waited for you to give you some of this stuff. It’ll make you feel better.”
Freeta held up a small glass bottle. A spray nozzle topped the colorful curving atomizer.
“Is that what you gave to Totanna?” Antaska asked. “Is that drugs!”
“Yeah, it’s drugs,” said Freeta. “It’s the good stuff the Verdante females take. You’ve never had anything like this. Here, have a puff.”
“No! I’m not taking drugs!” Antaska insisted. “We were taught about drugs on Earth. They’re dangerous and unhealthy.”
“Ha! What a child you are!” said Freeta. “This stuff isn’t dangerous unless you take as much as the Verdantes do. That much could kill you, but I’m only going to give you a bit. You’ll be fine. More than fine. I’ve been taking this stuff for 200 years, and it hasn’t hurt me.”
Antaska took a close look at Freeta. She couldn’t see much of her body beneath the loose dress, but her skin was lined and kind of puffy with dark circles around the eyes.
She must be about 250 years old, Antaska thought. Living with the Verdantes is supposed to make Earthlings healthier and live longer, but she looks worse than the humans I remember about that age on Earth.
“No thanks,” said Antaska again.
As if she hadn’t heard her, Freeta lifted the bottle and sprayed a puff of its contents right in Antaska’s face. Shocked, Antaska held her breath and quickly rinsed her face off with water from the sink.
“Why did you do that?” she asked Freeta. “I said ‘no.’”
“I don’t like taking ‘no’ for an answer,” said Freeta. “Anyway, holding your breath and washing your face won’t do any good. This stuff goes right into the skin. You should be feeling it about now.”
Antaska turned off the water and dropped her hands to her sides. She was feeling something. She felt euphoric and relaxed but also kind of sleepy. Her mind felt numb.
“See. It’s great. Isn’t it?” said Freeta.
“No. It is not great!” said Antaska. “You drugged me! I wasn’t going to tell anyone, but I’ll have to tell M. Hoyvil now.”
“Oh, you’d better not tell him,” Freeta threatened.
“Why not?” Antaska asked.
“Because if you do, you’re the one who’ll get in trouble. I’ll tell Ms. Janeez that you took her drugs from her room. She’ll believe me, and the adults will believe her over M. Hoyvil. Then who knows what will happen to you. They don’t like Earthlings who make trouble. They might give you a lobotomy, or they might make you and M. Hoyvil stay here on the Verdante planet.”
Oh, no! Antaska thought. That would be awful.
“Fine. I won’t tell M. Hoyvil,” said Antaska. “But stay away from me and keep your drugs away from me.”
Antaska turned and walked toward the door.
She heard Freeta laugh behind her. “Sure. I’ll stay away. But you’ll be back wanting more when it starts to wear off. Happens every time.”
In spite of the tranquilizer she’d just been given, Antaska felt panicky.
I’ve got to get away from here! And M. Hoyvil must be wondering why I’m taking so long, she thought.
With the easy speed she’d developed from her intense exercise program on the space ship voyage to this planet, Antaska ran out of the bathroom and down the long, curved hallway toward her room. The distance from the Earthling female bathroom was about a half of a mile, which was far by human standards but merely spacious to the gigantic Verdantes.
Antaska raced down the long corridor. Up ahead, she saw an Earthling female dressed in a jungle-print catsuit with matching stiletto heels.
That must be Totanna! Antaska thought.
The curvaceous Totanna strolled along at a slow pace, wobbling somewhat unsteadily on her six-inch heels.
“Showing off again!” Antaska heard Totanna say as she dashed by, but Totanna’s dislike was the least of her worries.
Antaska slowed down to a walk just before she reached the door to her own room. She tried to look calm and composed as she entered, so M. Hoyvil wouldn’t suspect anything.
Chapter 7
M. Hoyvil was still sitting on the floor looking absent-mindedly at Potat when Antaska entered the room.
“I’m sorry I took so long,” Antaska said. “Some other Earthlings were in the bathroom, and they wanted to talk.”
“Oh. Were you gone for long? I didn’t notice,” said M. Hoyvil. “But we’ll still be on time for dinner.”
Although M. Hoyvil was preoccupied with the upcoming social events and various young Verdante adolescent girls he already knew or might meet, he took his responsibility for Antaska seriously, and she was still in his thoughts. With his powerful Verdante sense of hearing, he’d heard her running down the hall toward the room, and he wondered why. Even from a sitting position, he didn’t need to look up much to see her face. He noticed the slight pink flush under her tan skin that made her look healthier and more energized than when he’d last seen her.
Was she running because she’s not getting enough exercise here? he wondered.
“Most people take the week off from exercise when they visit the home planet. But you don’t have to if you’d rather work out. There’s a gym in the residence I can take you to tomorrow if you want. There’s also a big community gym we can visit while we’re here. But if you want to rest instead, it’s completely up to you. I heard you running down the hall, and I thought you might be feeling restless,” he explained.
“Yes, I’d like to do that. Thank you,” said Antaska.
M. Hoyvil noticed that Antaska’s tan skin flushed even pinker.
Hmm. That’s odd. She must be embarrassed about something, he thought.
But he didn’t ask her what.
“Are you ready to go to dinner now? You don’t have to if you’re not up to it. It’s going to be noisy with so many Verdantes and Earthlings there. I can bring some food to your room if you want,” M. Hoyvil offered, trying to be accommodating.
“Oh, no thanks. I want to go. I’m feeling a lot better than when I first got here,” Antaska said.
M. Hoyvil, a growing adolescent, suddenly felt very hungry. Faster than the fastest Earthling, he sprang up from his seated position on the floor in one swift motion. Then he led Antaska to the dining hall at his natural long-legged swift pace. When she’d first joined him on the trip from Earth to his planet, M. Hoyvil had slowed down when he walked with her to accommodate her much shorter legs. But he’d increased his walking speed as she became more and more fit and told him she didn’t mind going faster.
As she approached the dining room with M. Hoyvil, Antaska heard soft bits and pieces of both vocal and telepathic conversations, and she braced herself for even more. The effects of the drug Freeta had sprayed on her made her feel mentally dull.
Will I be able to deal with a big noisy crowd of new people? she wondered. I’m not sure, but I’m not going to hide in my room.
Just as Antaska expected, a loud clash of vocal and telepathic noise assaulted her ears and mind as soon as they passed through the tall, wide-arched entranceway.
Dozens of humans and Verdantes of various ages sat mixed together, in chairs that fit their individual size and species, around an enormous oval dining table that filled the center of the large round room. The table, made of turquois
e stone, glowed beneath the soft golden shine of late afternoon sunlight reflected down through the top of the room’s domed ceiling.
Many heads turned in Antaska and M. Hoyvil’s direction. Antaska could hear several loud mental conversations of the Verdantes happening all at once. The vocal talk of the Earthlings with each other and the Verdantes next to them was much softer, continuous, and almost lost in the combined din of Verdante telepathic speech that blasted in Antaska’s mind.
Loudest and clearest were the mingled mental shouts of the child-sized Verdantes. “Sit with me, M. Hoyvil. Sit with me!”
Antaska jogged into the room to keep pace with long-striding M. Hoyvil.
“Thanks for the offer, everyone,” said M. Hoyvil. “But I have to sit with Ms. Janeez because she’s the oldest of my relatives to ask. Tradition, you know.”
The three Verdante children sitting to the left of Ms. Janeez shoved over to make room for M. Hoyvil and Antaska.
“Antaska must sit next to me,” Ms. Janeez insisted.
“Yeah! M. Hoyvil sits next to us,” said one of the big Verdante children.
“Don’t be rude to Antaska!” M. Hoyvil admonished them.
Antaska’s mood lifted, and she laughed. “It’s OK,” she said.
Then she turned to look at Freeta on Ms. Janeez’s other side. Freeta smiled and waved at her. Antaska remembered the drugs and all the bathroom talk. Her mood crashed back down.
She forced a calm, composed demeanor on her face and stood next to Ms. Janeez while M. Hoyvil and the three children retrieved suitable chairs from those arranged on the side of the room.
“Let us carry your chair!” insisted the children to M. Hoyvil in telepathic unison.
He agreed with a silent wave of six long green fingers, using the convenient third form of communication of the Verdantes–their own sign language.
M. Hoyvil selected and lifted a chair for Antaska and quickly carried it over to the table. The Verdante children were slower to carry his chair. Between the three, they awkwardly balanced a chair that was twice the size of the largest of them.
The situation with Freeta was fresh in Antaska’s mind as she climbed up the attached steps to her raised Earthling-size chair and sat at the table between M. Hoyvil and Ms. Janeez.
Antaska was even more disturbed when Freeta leaned around Ms. Janeez to speak to her. “I hope we can get together again after dinner tonight, Antaska. And I hope you remember what I told you.”
Is she threatening me? Antaska wondered.
Antaska was relieved to be interrupted from her worry about Freeta by the loud but kind voice of Ms. Janeez.
“Hello, Antaska. I’m Ms. Janeez. I see you’ve already met my human, Freeta.”
Antaska noticed that Ms. Janeez talked about Freeta as if she owned her, but Antaska knew most of the Verdantes thought of the Earthlings as pets.
I’m so glad that M. Hoyvil doesn’t talk about me like that! Antaska thought.
With her mind and ears bombarded by a confusing mix of soft human speech woven through with waves of Verdante telepathic conversation, Antaska was slow to reply, but Freeta spoke up to answer the question for her.
“Yes, we met in the Earthling female bathroom today,” she said in a friendly voice as she leaned around the huge Ms. Janeez again to look at Antaska with a sweet smile on her face that seemed fake. “Ms. Janeez is the most talented, artistic, and creative clothing designer on the entire Verdante planet. Even in the entire galaxy,” she added with sincerity.
“Oh, thank you Freeta,” replied Ms. Janeez with only the slightest touch of modesty.
She patted Freeta lightly on her puffy red hair, causing its waves to sway and thus demonstrating her artistry.
Freeta smiled up at her. This smile looked genuine and devoted.
“Anyway,” continued Ms. Janeez, turning back to Antaska, “as Freeta knows, I design outfits for Verdante family members and for my Earthlings. You’re a very unusual human, and I’ve been inspired to design an outfit that will express your inner spirit. I believe that you have the soul of a warrior as well as the physical appearance. I’d like to make fitting clothes for you to wear when you journey forth to do battle in the far-flung universe!”
“Thank you,” said Antaska. She wasn’t expecting to do battle on the exploratory space trip, but she didn’t think it would be polite to say that.
Although Antaska sat in a high chair that raised her to table level, she had to bend her head back to see Ms. Janeez’s face as she spoke. An older adolescent than M. Hoyvil, Ms. Janeez was over ten feet tall. But she still had a few hundred years of growing to do before she would reach her full height of about twelve feet.
Antaska watched Ms. Janeez’s deep green lips moving. They were fuller than M. Hoyvil’s lips. But they were still proportionally smaller than the lips of an Earthling compared to the rest of her head and face. She had the typical enormous, slanted Verdante eyes set in a huge cranium that narrowed down to a much smaller nose and chin.
Ms. Janeez’s voice was loud and clear, but Antaska was feeling fuzzy from the drug, and she was starting to have trouble separating the voice from everything else in the background. Particularly loud was a telepathic conversation taking place on her other side between M. Hoyvil and the three children who had visited Potat before dinner.
“Is really it true that Potat is your master, and you’re her pet?” They all asked him at once in loud, high-pitched telepathic voices that must have been heard by all the Verdantes who sat around the table.
Heads turned, including the heads of M. Hoyvil’s primary male and female gene contributors, Master Meeepp and Mistress Bawbaw. Antaska noticed that they seemed to be waiting with interest to hear M. Hoyvil’s reply.
M. Hoyvil paused and carefully considered the consequences that could arise depending on how he answered. He knew that if he said he was the pet of Potat, both Master Meeepp and Mistress Bawbaw, the heads of the family household, would be disturbed and displeased. Having to listen to a long drawn-out conversation that was mostly Master Meeepp lecturing him on appropriate behavior was a distinct possibility. Then he thought about what Potat’s reaction might be if the children told her that he’d said he wasn’t her pet.
“Yes, I’m the pet of the cat Potat and so is Antaska. We’re both her pets. Most humanoids don’t know this, but cats are actually superior beings. So that’s why our situation is different from other pet and master relationships,” M. Hoyvil answered the children.
M. Hoyvil felt quite pleased with his answer. Not only would it satisfy Potat if the children repeated it to her, but it resolved one of his worries about Antaska. He was sure that it was only a matter of time before she found out that the Verdantes considered Earthlings to be their pets. She seemed to have an uncanny way of finding things out that most humans didn’t notice or seem to care about. When that happened, and she asked him about it, he could truthfully claim that he’d accepted Potat as the master of both of them. So he couldn’t possibly think that he was Antaska’s master.
On the other hand, Antaska might be offended that he assumed that Potat was her master too. He pondered that possibility while he reached for the drink tube in front of him with one six-fingered hand. At the same time, he took a large forkful of the ancient Earth-style food that Mistress Bawbaw had ordered the residence to make as a special feast for this occasion.
The children kept asking questions about Potat. But M. Hoyvil swallowed a big gulp of the light green liquid and then chewed a large mouthful of spaghetti before answering. He noticed that Master Meeepp was rolling his enormous eyes. And Mistress Bawbaw’s upper eye corners were twitching somewhat uncontrollably, a sign of nervous laughter that was rarely seen on her normally calm face.
Unknown to M. Hoyvil, who still didn’t know that Antaska could hear Verdante telepathic conversations, Antaska had heard his words. But she wasn’t upset by them. Whether or not Potat thought she was the master of Antaska and M. Hoyvil, and whether or not M. Hoyvil bel
ieved it, were the least of her concerns at that moment. Her biggest worry was that Ms. Janeez was speaking to her, and she was having trouble hearing her.
Antaska thought she’d look like a fool if she kept staring back at Ms. Janeez but not saying anything.
This could get embarrassing. What should I do? she wondered. Maybe if I focus on Ms. Janeez and ignore all this other noise in my mind and ears, I’ll be able to hear what she’s saying.
She looked directly at Ms. Janeez and concentrated as hard as she could on her words, and it worked! The other thoughts and conversations became muffled and faded, and Antaska heard the tail end of Ms. Janeez’s conversation.
“I’ve already started working on it, but I’m hoping you’ll take it with you when you leave on your journey. I’ll have to get M. Hoyvil’s permission too, of course, but would you like that?”
“Yes, thank you,” said Antaska to be polite and cover up the fact that she hadn’t understood the first part of the conversation, and she wasn’t sure what she’d just agreed to.
“That’s marvelous!” Ms. Janeez shouted out loud, attracting the notice of the Earthlings around the table.
Then Ms. Janeez turned toward M. Hoyvil and interrupted his conversation with a loud telepathic call for his attention.
“M. Hoyvil, stop talking to those children and listen to me. This is very important.”
As the oldest of them, Ms. Janeez had the right to demand their attention and to give orders for certain things like performing small tasks for her or ceasing from undesirable behavior. All conversation between M. Hoyvil and the three children immediately stopped, and all four younger Verdantes turned to look at her.
M. Hoyvil knew that Ms. Janeez had an artist’s personality–obsessed with her work and not really interested in anything else. As usual, she got right to the point.
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