Indentured (Book 2 of the Dana Halliday series)

GUEST QUARTERS. LIORNOLLANNIR. ENOUGH DYSTOPIAN SCI-FI.

The guest quarters weren't as luxurious as the den, but I'd certainly never been in such a room. It felt like a swank hotel suite, every surface soft and inviting. 

"Six Earth hours," Wys said as she showed us in. On the outside of the door there was a metal disk painted to look like the Earth; we had passed other rooms with unfamiliar planets on their doors. "There is clean clothing in the bedrooms."

That last seemed like a strong hint. I was wearing my scrubs, of course, which were covered in cat hair and smelled vaguely of feline urine and feces. It felt like days since I'd last showered, although it had been that morning. Flynt sat on one of the couches, a festive, tasseled thing of green and yellow, and looked out the window. This was not as large as our observation window on Serendipity, but it showed Magnolia Base receding in the deep distance, looking golf ball sized.

"Oh god." My voice shook. "We're leaving the system, aren't we?"

Flynt nodded and drew a deep breath. "We can talk while you change clothes."

He followed me into one of the two bedrooms. This was as well appointed as the living room, with a round bed and a garage-sized closet full of various garments suitable for Earthers. There was a huge basin in one corner, practically large enough to bathe a small child. In a second corner, under another big window, was a ridiculously large jetted tub, an unholy extravagance on a spaceship. I expected to see naked Earthers snorting coke in it.

"I could fill that for you," I offered, rooting through the clothing in the closet. I was thinking he would find the touch of water soothing.

"I can't really take my shirt off." He held up his cuffed hands with a wry smile.

The closet had a bewilderment of articles, including a by-god Hawaiian shirt. "What if, you know, you took your hand off?"

"I don't have the key with me." This "key" was a little magnet-looking thing that released his prosthesis from his arm, although he rarely used it. "I'd like to wash the blood out of my shirt, though. The smell is...upsetting, but I have to wear it. It's rather warm in here."

I turned from the closet, feeling a little like I had been neglecting him. It was warm on the Det Ge Ler, warm enough that I noticed it. "Come here. I'm sorry, I'm trying to keep it together. Is it inappropriate if I hug you?"

Flynt laughed, a genuine laugh. It had been a silly question to ask a touchy-feely Fenn. Gingerly, I put my arms around him, careful of his wound. He couldn't embrace me back, but he rubbed his face in my hair, behind my ear. "Liornollannir. I think hugging is a universal gesture."

I tried the word out, one of the simpler Fenn words I'd heard him speak. I can't roll my r's or speak Elvish, so it wasn't quite right. I knew ibirran, an abbreviated form of the word for healer, sillettrao, which meant friend, and a few others, but I hadn't heard this one before. "Liornollannir. What does that mean?"

"Nothing specific, just a...term of endearment. If you were saying it to someone, you'd stress different syllables." He repeated it, differently, which seemed to amuse him.

"Why?"

"You're female." He smiled as I pulled back to look at him, and touched his forehead to mine. "I didn't make the rules. Come on, we don't have much time."

I ran cold water into the big sink, and pulled Flynt's shirt over his head and off his arms so he could soak it. I found a cloth and started cleaning the dried blood from his injured arm. The wound looked raw but clean. "Pain?"

"Better than it was."

There was blood on his face and head too, spatter from his arm. He let me wipe it away, quivering a little when I dabbed some from his left antenna. "What would happen if you lost one of these?" I asked.