“The place where you find strangers.”

  “Yes.” Ondry let his fingers shift up to rest against the back of Liam’s neck, and between the bindings around his leashed leg and the hand at his neck, Liam’s cock was getting all kinds of confused. “We have buried electrical conduits deep into the rock and used them to link magnetic fields in the area to make the place appear from space as a major source of electromagnetic energy. We find we must put out…” Ondry twitched his aggravation.

  “Signs?” Liam guessed.

  “We would have a more precise word, but in essence, yes. It is a sign. And we find that if we do not put out a sign, others species tend to assume that a failure to abuse technology implies a failure to use it. Humans are among those who would make that mistake. We have a saying we generally avoid telling outsiders to avoid inadvertent insult. ‘She who lives less than a millennium cannot see the horizon.’ It is why the grandmothers rule. Only they will live so long.”

  Nothing Ondry said could have made it quite so clear that he planned to never let Liam go. He didn’t see Liam as an outsider—he planned for Liam to stay. However, that didn’t mean he would always want Liam by his side. Liam suspected that Ondry would get what profit he could and then trade Liam to another. Hopefully Ondry liked him well enough to trade him to someone kind, but Liam couldn’t count on that. But maybe he could play Scheherazade, only instead of charming Ondry with stories, he could tempt him with the knowledge Liam had about humans. The trick would be to let bits and pieces trickle out.

  “Humans do say to respect the elders. It’s in some of our oldest religious texts.”

  Ondry pulled Liam a little closer as they walked. “I find that amusing. The oldest of you is barely more than a century. At a century, we still smile at a young one’s many mistakes.”

  “How old are you?”

  “In your time, nearly two hundred years. I am just entering my prime. You, however, are not as old. And I will not ask because I prefer to think of you in human terms. You are an adult of your prime, and not a being so young he still has bits of shell clinging to his backside.” Ondry gave him a very amused look, and Liam found himself leaning into that promise of affection.

  They continued down the path, the trees appearing irregularly even in the middle of fields of cultivated grains. In places, Rownt walked the fields, and in others, tall robots with spindle-like legs picked their way over crops. A fork in the path had colored stone decorating each side, and Liam suspected the stones were a sort of street sign. Ondry chose the path with three green stones embedded into the earth in a rough pyramid shape.

  Leaning down, Ondry brushed the dust from the surface. “If you do this each time you pass a pathway, then others can see which paths are most chosen, and the owner of the path does not need to come down to reset the stones.”

  Liam crouched down, the straps on his right leg uncomfortably tight as he imitated Ondry’s gesture. “Is this the way to Tracsha?”

  “Yes.”

  Ondry didn’t seem in any hurry to continue down the path. Liam took some time to trace a subtle carving in the surface of one six- or seven-inch stone. “Why three green stones?”

  “When Tracsha was born, she was one of three eggs that had a greenish color. My father always told of how they teased her mother for eating too much nella fruit because she seemed obsessed with it. When she carried her eggs, she would make poor trades to secure more fruit.”

  “So, do all three siblings have the same markings to show their house?”

  Ondry’s eyes widened as he looked down at Liam. “Most eggs fail to hatch. She is the only one with such markings.”

  “What’s your sign?”

  Ondry squatted down, his body mirroring Liam’s except that he rested his hands on Liam’s knees. “I am one white stone. My mother was the oldest of a female who had many eggs and who had few children strong enough to come through the thick shell she laid. By the time she did have sons and daughters, this land suffered a drought. No one laid eggs for nearly two centuries as the land needed to recover before we could fully farm it again. Sometimes when females wait a long time, they lay eggs with dangerously thick shells. Once this female’s children began to lay, generation after generation died within the egg. She was old now, long past the age to join the grandmothers and well respected. And still, she did not have grandchildren.

  “My mother laid another six eggs, and of that batch, only I emerged. On the day I was born, I lost my grandmother because she walked to the temple and became a tribal grandmother. The white stone represents the ceremonial robes of the grandmothers worn until all the people know of her new status.”

  Liam struggled to think of some story from Earth he could offer up that might equal that in value. Trapped between regulations that forbade so many topics and a cold desperation to prove he had some sort of value, Liam found himself utterly unable to think of anything.

  Ondry stood. “Come. Let us go see Tracsha before she hears rumors of Nav and raises her prices.” Catching Liam under one arm, Ondry practically lifted him to his feet before draping an arm around his back.

  The path wound its way around several old trees before ending at a small home with narrow windows set high on the tall walls.

  “Ondry? You have finally found someone to grab your tail.” A woman came out from the main door, her face tight with amusement. She was lighter than most Rownt, an almost lavender hue on the lightest part of her body, and she didn’t have a single bit of mottling on her face. Liam guessed she was young. She couldn’t be much more than Ondry’s seven feet—maybe even less.

  “You were not going to grab it,” Ondry returned as he angled his body so that she had more of his left side, leaving his right side to Liam. With his tail wrapped around his right leg, the gesture was rather unmistakable. He put his tail closer to Liam and farther from the young woman. Liam tried to not let that affect him, but he could feel the pride at being chosen, and it was too close to that same pride when Kaplan had smiled at him soon after Liam had reached the front.

  “Don’t be so sure. One of these days, I may want hatchlings around.” She sounded amused as she sat on the wide step and grabbed a handful of unshelled da nuts and started cracking them. The shells went in one basket and the kernel in another.

  “If you want hatchlings, then you should grab another’s tail. I have my hands full without you passing your extras to me.”

  Tracsha’s gaze went to Liam. “I see that. A human?”

  “A palteia.”

  “Really?” She paused in her work. “I had not thought the species sane enough for such things.”

  “He passed the grandmothers’ test—twelve of them judged—and his chilta was judged unworthy.”

  The skin around her eyes paled. “That does not surprise me. I hear the new human insulted the grandmothers and questioned their judgment.”

  “He didn’t mean to go that far,” Liam blurted out. Immediately, he shut his mouth. What the hell was he thinking defending the colonel? More importantly, what the hell was he thinking interrupting what seemed to be an important conversation? If it were Mort on the other end of the leash, Liam would have been on the floor by now.

  “What did he mean to do?” Ondry looked at him with that curious wide-eyed look, and Tracsha leaned forward on the step, the nuts forgotten.

  Liam looked from one to the other. Well, shit. He did want to prove his worth, but at this rate, he was moving through the regulations and breaking them with an almost methodical constancy. Traders did not comment on officers’ motives. Ever. Only sometimes they were leashed and desperate to not get sold, and then they did. He was so screwed.

  “When the players change—when the people doing the trading change—in human terms that can change the rules.”

  “New leaders, new rules?” Tracsha looked up at Ondry with an odd expression. “They’re blestata.” The new term didn’t have any familiar roots, and there wasn’t enough context for Liam to understand if it was a compliment, an insult, or something in between. If he were going to make a wild guess based on nothing more than their expressions, it wasn’t a compliment.

  “The possibility existed. This is only the first evidence of it,” Ondry said mildly.

  “This is why you trade, and I raise food.” Tracsha returned to shelling her nuts. “So, I assume you came to trade food and not simply put me in your debt with such interesting pieces of information.”

  “The information is free,” Ondry said, using a variation of free that implied strings would come later. Tracsha huffed. “I had heard that you overplanted playsha root, and I thought I might rescue you from your youthful foolishness.” Ondry opened with an insult.

  Tracsha paled, but with another insult about his tail that Liam couldn’t even hope to translate, the two of them entered serious negotiations. It ended with a cart piled high with playsha root and a promise of two new handcarts to be delivered at a time in the near future.

  Liam half expected to be ordered to pull the handcart or maybe even to be chained to it, but Ondry stepped between the handles, and they started trundling down the road with their goods.

  Liam walked beside Ondry, fingering the three green stones embedded into the cart’s wood. “She threatened to grab your tail.”

  Ondry huffed. “Women do that. It’s why we generally avoid them when they start looking fondly at any egg-shaped object.” Ondry looked over at him. “But you have some other question in your head. How could you have ever bested me in trades when every thought you have seems to dance like age speckles on your face?”

  “Tails aren’t sexual, are they?”

  Ondry’s eyes flared wide. “No.”

  Liam started when Ondry’s tail brushed against his arm. It was hairless…nearly. It had less hair than an average human finger. Darker violet than the rest of Ondry, the tail seemed to have a mind of its own as it curled around Liam’s forearm.

  For a second, Liam was almost afraid to touch it, but he reached out and ran a finger along the grain of the tiny hairs, feeling the cool skin contract under his fingers.

  “You’re warm,” Ondry said.

  “You’re cool.”

  “Your logic is impeccable.”

  Ondry’s tail tightened round Liam’s forearm, tugging him closer. “It’s not sexual.”

  “But you don’t want people touching your tail.” That sentence definitely had logical construction problems because Liam was current stroking the tail. He could feel each tiny bone, like a cat’s tail, and hard muscle ran under the skin.

  “Generally no. It’s hard to fight when someone has your tail. Because it’s part of the spine, if it’s pulled hard enough, the pressure sends pain up through the entire spine and body.”

  Liam paused and had to do a quick step to catch up as he realized that females had only short tails that barely hung to their knees. The males had long tails. “So, they’re about fighting?” That made no sense because Rownt females were equally willing to fight, maybe more so if the storyscrolls were true.

  “They can be. Generally grabbing one’s tail is an expression of trust or power. Females will often joke about grabbing a male’s tail, and tailless societies are sometimes the center of some unkind humor.”

  Stories and jokes were prime material for a linguist. “What sort of humor?”

  Ondry’s eyes narrowed as he focused on the path again, but his skin paled slightly. “Generally the crux of the joke focuses on the lack of a tail meaning a lack of discretion in choosing parents for one’s young.”

  “Tailless species are whores?” Okay, that joke had an entirely new level when it was aimed at humans, and at Liam in particular. How often had Mort called him a pretty piece of tail? Of course that was before his last growth spurt when he’d shot up from five-seven to six-one. Men weren’t as confident about their power when fucking a six-foot-tall whore.

  “Tailless species are poor parents who do not choose genetic material with care,” Ondry corrected him.

  “That’s oddly accurate,” Liam muttered.

  Ondry gave him a wide-eyed look, and Liam could only shrug. He was trying to figure out how tails related to genetic choice, and suddenly Craig’s Rownt porn came to mind.

  “Females grab the tail to control the males in order to get the genetic material.”

  Ondry glanced over with a neutral expression. “Yes. I wouldn’t want a weak female to choose me. I want to make sure our genetic offspring are strong enough to come out of the egg, so I would only allow a strong and fast female to hold me down and claim my genetic material.”

  “That’s rape.” The words slipped out before Liam could edit them. It wasn’t rape. Rape was a cultural construct created by a particular set of understandings the Rownt did not possess. Liam knew better than to allow value-laden words into the conversation. “I’m sorry. That’s wrong.”

  “Define rape.”

  “It’s not important.” Liam started walking faster, hoping to stay in front of Ondry, but that damn tail tightened and pulled Liam back until Ondry caught him by the back of the neck.

  “If you do not answer, I shall assume that this is another issue requiring force for you to avoid psychological harm, and I shall force you to explain.” Ondry stopped, pulling Liam to a halt with him.

  “Now there’s a line every psychiatrist wishes he could use,” Liam joked, but he could feel the panic making his chest tighten.

  “Psychiatrist. One who works with humans to determine the psychological health of an individual or to try and repair psychological damage done in the past.” Ondry reached out and put both hands around Liam’s throat, the fingers intertwining so that Liam felt collared. “Why would a psychiatrist wish for the power to force truth?”

  “This is dangerous territory,” Liam warned as he wrapped his fingers around Ondry’s wrists almost involuntarily. He couldn’t fight the Rownt, but he couldn’t prevent himself from trying. He strained ineffectually at Ondry’s limbs.

  “Then we return to the first question. What is rape?”

  Liam could feel his skin grow hot with emotion, and with two hands wrapped around his throat, Ondry was going to notice it as well. “Issues of sexuality are difficult to explain.”

  “I am intelligent,” Ondry countered, and his expression made it clear he wasn’t moving on this issue. Liam would have paid any price to get away, but he couldn’t. He was caught, and now he felt like a fly about to get eaten by a spider, and he couldn’t protect himself. “What happens during rape?” Ondry asked, his voice softer.

  Liam swallowed, his dry mouth making that painful. He needed to figure out how to say as little as possible. “Sometimes one human wants to have sex, and another doesn’t. That’s all.” The words were ash in his mouth. That wasn’t all, but that was all he was willing to share with his current owner.

  “How is such a conflict resolved?”

  “How would it be resolved for Rownt?” Liam asked. Classic redirection, but it was classic because it often worked.

  “If the female is strong enough, she can force the copulation over any objection. Apna did such to me, and when the time comes that she chooses to use my genetic material, I believe she will have strong hatchlings. She is very powerful, and I like to think I have better than average genetics.” Ondry didn’t sound upset at all, but Liam could feel a crawling sort of horror that Ondry should have gone through that. He was too strong—too beautiful—for that sort of treatment.

  Ondry paled, and then Liam found himself tugged to the side of the road. “Come. Sit. You look unwell.”

  Liam focused on his breathing as the hands fussing over him raised specters from his past—Mort patting his back after he’d been ripped so badly he’d landed in the hospital.

  “She shouldn’t have.” Liam felt a cold fury so intense that he would have shot this Apna between the eyes if she had appeared in front of him.

  “How should I feel? How would you feel were she to do that to you?” Ondry held Liam in a circle of arms that he couldn’t escape.

  “She didn’t do that to me.”

  “How should I feel? Tell me, Liam. How should I feel?” Ondry kept poking that same feeling over and over.

  Liam couldn’t breathe, but he couldn’t avoid answering Ondry’s question either. “Horrified. She took something. She took it without permission.”

  Ondry had started rocking gently, but at that he stopped. “What will she do with what she has stolen?”

  “What?” Liam pushed at the arms that held him. He didn’t want to be helpless, not again. It never worked out well for him.

  “She stole my genetic material. What will she do with it?” Ondry’s words were whispers against Liam’s ear. Five years Liam had laughed and fought with that voice, and until this moment, he never realized how much he had come to rely on it. “Tell me, Liam. What will she do?”

  “Nothing. Throw it away.” Liam felt his eyes get hot. Okay, this was stupid. He had his ghosts, but he’d put them to rest years ago. He’d stopped listening to their jeers when he’d learned to stand on his own feet and not allow others to take control of him.

  “So, rape is copulation where one partner is unwilling, and the other partner plans to disrespect and disregard the genetic material shared during that copulation?” From the tone, Ondry clearly didn’t understand that concept. “Why take genetic material if not to claim it?”

  A rough laugh broke out of Liam’s chest, and he pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. “Because they like having sex.”

  “Really?” That was a shocked Rownt right there.

  “It’s pleasurable. They have sex to feel good, and sometimes humans don’t care if the other person wants it or not.”

  “Does no one stop such theft?”

  Liam pushed aside the rotting feelings that had settled into the pit of his stomach as he considered how deep he had dug this hole. Command would never forgive him for airing this piece of psychological garbage in front of an alien species. Maybe he could claim a psychological breakdown. Maybe it would be like Colonel Thackeray, and they would find him a safer place to serve as he healed. And maybe they would look at him as some piece of Earth trash and throw him in prison.

 

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