I Was An Alien Cat Toy (20 page)

had changed? And how could he find out? He needed more vocabulary.

It was much colder today, and even huddled against Gredar’s fur, he was feeling it—as if he needed

another reminder how unsuited he was for survival in this landscape. By the time they got to Martek’s house,

all the other end of the village, Temin was miserable—frozen to the bone, still coming down from the terror

of seeing J’len just about ready to rip someone’s throat out, and despairing of ever having something

resembling a normal life again. He didn’t usually feel this crappy after a night of good sex.

Martek greeted them enthusiastically at the door of his house. Temin was used to him by now, but he

was still jittery enough that the older male’s loud cries made him want to cringe, and Gredar look at Temin

anxiously. Temin was sick of saying ‘Temin good’ when he wanted to let fly with some decent explanation,

so he just shrugged. Martek bustled into his front room and didn’t notice anything was wrong.

Temin couldn’t help the clench of anxiety in his gut as Gredar said goodbye to them both, but the

problem with faking a smile was that he wasn’t sure Gredar couldn’t just
smell
the terror on him. The big guy

was way too intuitive about Temin’s feelings, so either he had to be getting a non-verbal clue from somewhere, or the day-neh had secret powers of telepathy. Which he doubted, so smell was the most likely

thing.

Gredar left with just a quick reassuring pat. Martek wanted to get to work immediately, and an hour

later, Temin understood why. It turned out he was the local teacher as well. Ten young day-neh of varying

ages turned up and Temin was taken to a smaller library room. He got a lot of looks and pointing fingers,

before he was left on his own to explore. Easier said than done when so much was stored well above his

reach, but Martek had said he could look at any of the books he wanted. He detached the imager from the

handheld, and went hunting.

It took him nearly an hour, but in the end, it was surprisingly easy to find, once he’d worked out

Martek’s record system was generational. Then it was just a matter of counting back along the tooled leather

spines of the fat books—he thought it was kind of ironic that a civilisation that could make paper so durable

that it could last hundreds of years without yellowing, and so thin that a thousand pages were no more than

two centimetres thick, had never got around to inventing cloth of any kind. But then the day-neh valued

writing and didn’t know what clothes were, so that was that.

The day-neh were really good artists. Realistic, accurate. He wished they’d been a lot less competent

at their renditions. The story was horrifying enough without the blood and the decapitated bodies. The other

thing they were, was thorough. It was all there. First contact. The hunting parties. The slaughter of hundreds

of unsuspecting individuals. And finally...the annihilation of the enemy, and the destruction of all that they

held dear.

Mechanically, he took images of each page before he put the book back in its place. He flicked

through the stored pictures in the imager, his stomach roiling as each flashed up.
Humans
had done this.

Arrived on a supposedly empty planet, discovered a large predatory species, and started to eradicate them.

The day-neh had had no choice but to amass together and launch an all out attack. No humans had survived.

And so the colony had died.

Temin hugged himself and stared up at the light panels in the ceiling, wondering where this left him.

Martek might not have read that book in years—he had hundreds—and even if he did, he wouldn’t

necessarily connect the colonists with Temin because they were drawn in battle armour. Temin’s colony had

been populated from what had been the Greater Asian Confederation on Terra. The colonists on Ptane had

been from the European Alliance, and looked rather different from Temin’s people, though not as different as

day-neh did from humans. If Temin drew Martek’s attention to it—which he shefting well wasn’t going to—

the connection would be easily made, but it was likely Martek wasn’t even that interested in events hundreds

of years ago, or had any idea the electrical equipment he owned was anything to do with it.

If they knew, they would kill him, and he couldn’t even blame them. To have met a highly evolved

race only to have tried to wipe them out—to wipe out people like Gredar and Martek—the colonists deserved

all they got, if the drawings were even halfway accurate. There was probably a bit of propaganda, but the

enemy was gone by the time those pictures were drawn. Temin hadn’t been able to detect much in the way of

exaggeration for effect—why would they need to?

The attack was so far back in their history, it wasn’t something that came to mind when they’d

captured him. He was probably safe enough—safe as he ever could be here. He was probably lucky that

being alone and considered weak by their standards, he wasn’t considered a threat.

But there was more than his safety to consider here. He was no philosopher or historian. He was just a

flyboy, and all he knew about old Terran cultures had been what he’d been made to study at school before

he’d made good enough scores on his exams to get into the academy and qualify as a pilot. When he was a

child, he’d eagerly read the stories of those first spacers—their bravery, their losses, how fantastical dreams

of a life beyond the stars had become reality with the development of faster than light technology. He’d also

read, for amusement, the predictions of the future by Terran authors, who had got so much wrong, and yet

had got the wonder of it all just right. What he’d stumbled across had been part of myth and imagination for

thousands of years, never once experienced. It was potentially the most important discovery ever made in this

galaxy—the first non-human, non-Terran sentient race. It was his job—his duty—to tell that story.

His discovery of the day-neh might never be known in his lifetime. He would certainly never be able

to tell his story in person, but he could still record what he was seeing, what he was learning. He could

transmit his data in a loop, once he’d got it together. It only had to be picked up once, and the podpod could

transmit, in theory, until this planet’s sun collapsed in on itself in billions of years’ time. It might take him a

lifetime, but he had that time to spare, and it would be something useful, meaningful. He would make sure

that humans knew sentient, unique lifeforms lived here—and that they were not helpless, or defenceless. That

the day-neh deserved respect, and to be treated with dignity. This was something he could do, still be useful

for.

The thought cheered him a little. He intended to get on with things as quickly as possible, but he

ended up spending a lot more time staring into space and thinking about what he’d just learned than getting

on with looking through the clan’s records.

When Martek bounded into the room some time later, he snapped Temin out of a semi-doze. “T’meen

tir-ed?” he demanded, his fur on end with suppressed energy, his thick tail swishing happily. It was hard to

remember that he was supposed to be an old man by day-neh standards.

“Puti. A little. Martek...?” Temin hastily looked up the word for ‘finished’.

“Ye-ess. Domdom harsi.”

‘Domdom’—‘time for’, thus, ‘time for food’, Temin worked out—and carefully wrote it down as

Martek ran out again to get them something to eat. He should try to record Martek and Gredar speaking—but

it would be difficult to do that without revealing his equipment. He’d have to rig something up—at least he

could image his language notes.

Martek called him into the main room a few minutes later, and Temin was served meat and bread as

he had been the previous day. Martek ate little, but drank mugs and mugs of the disgusting tea he liked so

much. He kept looking over at Temin as he ate, until Temin laid his bread down. “What?”

“Temin getip Gredar suun.”

“Yeah? Is that right?” Temin folded his arms. “What? Getip, what? Suun, what?”

Martek made a little growl of impatience. “Suun, suun....” He sniffed extravagantly. “Gredar suun.

Temin getip Gredar suun.”

“Smell? Scent...I have Gredar’s scent on me?” It took a little bit of miming before he confirmed the

meaning of ‘getip’. “Gredar suun wasa? Scent bad?”

“Nooo, nooo. Gredar jilalim Gredar suun
anwa
Temin.”

“Gredar something his scent to me...gives it?” He picked up the bread and made a show of handing it

to Martek. “Jilalim—give.” Martek nodded. “Okay—Gredar gave me his scent. So?” He shrugged. What was

the big deal?

Martek leaned over and poked him hard in the shoulder.

“Ow! Don’t do that, you shefting thug. What?”

“Gredar jilalim
suun
.” And then Temin swore the old bugger
waggled
his eyebrows—or where his

eyebrows would be—at him.

Temin’s cheeks flushed hot. “Are you asking me if we fucked?” Martek cocked his head, his tail

swishing. “I am not talking to you about my sex life, Martek.” It was bad enough he’d had sex with an alien,

he wasn’t going to talk to the alien’s best friend about it.

Frustrated by Temin’s refusal to talk (and the lack of any means to do so if he were so minded)

Martek dropped the subject, though Temin very much doubted he’d stopped thinking about it. Instead, he

apparently decided it was his duty to cram as much day-neh language into Temin’s skull as possible. He

wasn’t as patient as Gredar, nor as kind—but he
did
have a lot more books, and experience at teaching

children, so it went faster than Temin was expecting. He still wanted to stab the bastard a little after a couple

of hours of it, when his head pounded and his hand cramped from making all the notes, but he now had a list

of all the most useful verbs and prepositions, some worthwhile adjectives (so he now knew a lot more than

‘good’, ‘bad’ and ‘tired’), and a slightly clearer idea what ‘elsart’ meant.

He’d thought ‘elsart’ was just beautiful, and ‘torgu’ was ‘ugly, and they were, but it was more than

that. There was almost a religious aspect to the concepts, which was weird because the day-neh had no

religion or gods at all, not that Temin could see any evidence of. When Gredar called him ‘elsart’, he wasn’t

just saying he was handsome or pretty—he was saying that that looking at him was spiritually uplifting. It

was their highest compliment.
Shefting
embarrassing.

The other thing he learned was that they didn’t
have
the concept of evil or good. It took a bit of

teasing out, but Filwui wasn’t considered bad to the bone because he’d raped Temin—his offence had been

his disrespect for the clan head and her family. The rape and injuries had offended because they’d damaged

Temin’s appearance—not because it violated his rights or privacy or anything like that. Rape as a crime

barely existed, and was never committed within the clan. But what had happened to Temin wasn’t considered

rape, just property damage.

He had to get up and walk around for a bit after Martek had explained that because he was so

disturbed. It seemed such a materialistic way to live, even to someone raised strictly secular—yet day-neh

society seemed ordered and cultured and capable of kindness. How could that be, when all that their civilized

behaviour was based on nothing more than loyalty to the clan and an appreciation of beauty?

“T’meen okaaay?”

That was one of Martek’s new words. Temin shook his head and explained as best he could that

he...had a lot to think about.

Martek nodded. “Ye-ess. Meni woords. T’meen do good.”

Temin smiled tiredly, appreciating Martek’s attempt to encourage him. “Gredar come? When?”

“Sooon.” Then he made a little yowly chuckle. “Gredar sooon suun.”

Temin stared. “You just made a pun.”

“Pah-nnn?”

“Martek wasa day-neh. Bad day-neh. ‘Soon suun’. No srar. Not funny.”

“Ye-ess. Meni srar.” And he chuckled again, his tail flicking in delight at his own cleverness. Temin

rolled his eyes.
Spare me.

Gredar arrived just minutes later, shaking snow off himself and sounding a little out of breath. He

gave Temin a hug and licked Martek’s face, and Temin couldn’t believe how good it was to see the big guy

again after a few hours apart. Something about Gredar made all the strangeness of Temin’s new life, and

especially what he’d learned today, seem more...manageable, like he’d be able to deal with it because he had

Gredar to help him. But then Temin thought back to the argument that morning with J’len and wondered if he

was fooling himself. Gredar might not be allowed to be around him for much longer.

He’d expected they would leave then and there, but after Martek made some fresh, nasty tea for

Gredar and himself, it became clear Gredar had things to do unconnected to Temin’s presence. Temin sat

back with a cup of water and watched, slightly stunned, as Martek and Gredar began to trade the most

appalling yowls, while Martek slapped the table in time to a rhythm only he understood. Every so often

Gredar would stop, and Martek would write something down, or yowl something that Gredar repeated. The

noise was giving Temin a bigger headache than he already had, though it was strangely fascinating.

After nearly half an hour of this, Gredar stopped, sipped his smelly tea and then seemed to remember