Page 30 of Ensnared By the Rabbit Genius
“I can be happy wherever you are,” he said before he kissed me.
EPILOGUE
SEIWA
Two months. It took two months for us to filter through the applications from scientists all over Earth to determine the first four thousand program members. I had only wanted four hundred participants, but Ellis had come out of the lavatory while I was typing and I’d entered one too many zeros. He was very distracting when he was naked. And now I had four thousand humans who thought they were brilliant following me around with questions.
I led the six who currently shadowed me back to Squire. He was coordinating their transfer to theShendo-kinemuch the same way he did when it was sex workers being transported to Nor. All six of them groaned when we stood before Squire again.
“I thought you were going to give us a tour of the ship,” one of the men whined.
“Why would I do that? You’d probably break something.”
One of the women put her hands behind her back and smiled. “What if we promise to keep our hands to ourselves? Will you take us to see the engines?”
Though I could admire her willingness to be restrained, she was not the person I wished to see cuffed. “Absolutely not. Thereisn’t a single one of you who will have access to any critical functions on the ship.”
“But please?” another man asked. “We’re all aerospace engineers. We understand the sensitive nature of the equipment.”
I cringed. “That makes you evenmoredangerous.”
Another one of them tried to touch me, and I flinched back only to bump into the wall.
“Okay!” Squire said as he slipped in between me and the scientists. “Do each of you have your luggage?”
I stayed where I was as each human focused on Squire and asserted that they had their bags. He asked about their tablets and whether the devices showed their berth information. When they confirmed that, Squire clapped his hands excitedly and beamed at them.
“Excellent!” Squire gestured them toward the bridge tube connecting theZaaqnallto theShendo-kineagain. “Let’s start by finding our quarters and getting familiar with the essentials like lavatories and mess halls. After that, we have several days of activities and events that will satisfy your curiosities in every possible way.”
There would be activities and events? Goddess, I hoped no one had seen fit to make me lead any of them. The next person who asked me about the warp core was going to lose an eye.
As Squire led the humans away, someone said beside me, “They’re predisposed to follow you.”
I stood up from the wall as I realized it was Captain Langarus. “Predisposed, sir?”
He nodded. “They have a fable about a girl named Alice who gets lost and follows a white rabbit.” He squinted at me. “Or she got lost because she followed him.” He waved it all away. “Regardless, they follow white rabbits.”
I kept my back against the wall just in case any of the remaining humans got any ideas. “Some of Ellis’s coworkers called him Alice several times,” I told the captain. “I thought they were mispronouncing his name.”
“Mmm, no. They follow the white rabbit but also make jokes about doing so.”
I rubbed at my temples. “Humans are so strange.”
“Speaking of,” he said, “I came down here looking for mine.”
“He’s there,” I pointed, “saying goodbye to Ellis.”
I was glad Ellis had gotten into the group with the other human mates. He was more social than I was and wanted to make friends. I was sorry to take him away from them now, but I was obligated to both deliver the scientists and take a leave since I’d been on theZaaqnallfor a year now. Not all of us swapped out regularly—the captain never did unless he requested it—but it was good for us to return to Nor for a time if we could. I might be busy with training the humans for some time, but should I be able to escape them down the line, I would discuss with Ellis his thoughts on returning to active ship duty.
I watched as Ellis hugged the prince consort, Rampon’s mate whose leg was still functioning flawlessly despite being a prototype, and the captain’s mate as well. As they walked away from Ellis, I saw four humans with luggage and tablets heading my way. Everything in me tightened.
The captain chuckled. “Perhaps if you simply walk them to their quarters…”
“Do you know how many questions they can ask in the time it takes to simply cross the tube?”
“No, but?—”
“Eighty-seven!”
