Page 35 of Relyn
Relyn did not strike her as a cheater. He wasn’t a good liar, at least she had not caught him in a lie. He always told the truth, but told it slant, as Emily would say. And he was bad at that. She could read into what he was not saying.
“What about the walking amoeba?” Wendy repeated.
“Grom is not a threat. I can deal with him,” Relyn said.
“By dealing with him, you don’t mean kill, do you?” Nora asked.
“No. I do not intend to harm him. Perhaps leave him somewhere, but I believe returning to Rutra without his nephew would be difficult,” Relyn said.
“So you’re still going back to the pirate ship,” Nora said.
“I have not finished my work there,” Relyn said.
Well, they’d have to see about that. Decisions seemingly having been made, Nora went to the dining and kitchen aide to seek out food that did not come in cubes.
Data was there, and after a few strokes and kitty treats, he seemed to have forgiven her. Relyn stood in the doorway, staring at the cat suspiciously.
“It is a pet?”
“He. He is a pet. You can touch him. Just let him smell you first and don’t touch his belly. He likes to be pet on the head and the back. And don’t pick him up or touch his tail.”
“He seems to have a lot of rules,” Relyn said, drawing closer.
“And you have just summed up the nature of his entire species,” Nora said. She giggled when Relyn looked at her confused. He put out his hand, and Data gave it a sniff.
“So,” Nora asked. “Could you transform into Data?”
“If I had a sample, but for a form so small, I would have difficulty maintaining my mass density.”
“So you’d be a two hundred pound cat?” Nora laughed, imagining a Relyn Data stomping his way across the floor. Then she imagined him as a Great Dane, like Scooby Doo, trying to jump into her arms.
Relyn smiled at her. “Your laugh is music.”
The infatuation on his face just made her laugh harder.
Nora had never had a man stare at her like that before, with that silly grin on his face, trying to make her laugh. But she didn’t know anything about him, other than he had no family and no qualms about living and working for a pirate.
“So, what do you do in your spare time?” Nora asked casually.
“Spare? Time is never spare.”
“Okay, let me reword that. What do you do when you are not working.”
“I am always working. Rel is always working.”
“You and Rel are different?”
“Rel is muscle for hire. I am not.”
“So what does Relyn do when he is not working.”
“I like to read.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve read any Terran literature?”
“Until I met you, I did not know that Terra existed.”
“That’s a pretty good excuse.”
