Page 6 of Taken to Kor
I scream when it lodges itself deep inside my head and I try to shake it out. But then I hear something. I think I do anyway. It sounds like someone speaking very far away. It sounds like a man’s voice. A male’s anyway, because I know it can’t be human. I think about how wonderful it would be to actually talk to someone and then all at once, the connection sharpens, becoming clear. All other sounds drown out and I’m left listening to someone who I know can hear me.
“Hello?” I say.
A momentary silence.
“Interesting.”
The same voice jolts me into action now. “Deena, are you alright?”
“Shrov!” I jerk at the unexpected sound. Cursing in Meero, I quickly scratch the communicator out of my ear. I stare at it in my palm, completely and totally agog. Agog. I always thought that word was dumb. Like somebody meant to exclaim,“I’m a frog!”but mispronounced it.
“Holy shit!” I curse again in Human at the little silver bead — it’s a Niahhorru token and allows me to communicate with any other Niahhorru token. Ships are made out of the same material, allowing me to control this one without use of the pad built into the armrest. Or at least, it did, but I…I was sure I disabled it.
“You’re not real!” I shout at the bead only to be rewarded whenlaughterechoes all around me.It’s coming from the ship! Itisalive! And it didn’t even compliment me on my singing. Alive andrude.
I glance around at the emptiness beyond the walls. Planets, stars, asteroids, all listlessly floating by, minding their own business. And me, an intruder among them, listening to laughter that can’t be real.Maybe, Iamcrazy. I’m less mad about the fact that I might be clinical than I am about the fact that, if I am nutso crazytown, that means Mathilda was right about something.
But then the voice says, “You didn’t think you’d get rid of me that easily, did you Deena?”
“Shrov! How did you…” My jaw works. I amble from my knees onto my feet and shake my fist at the ceiling. “I disabled my token!”
He breathes out very slowly and makes a clicking sound. “Deena, that isn’t possible.”
“You…you told me it was possible.” I’m suddenly mortified. All those times I thought I had privacy and he was listening? “You taught me the command to disable it…” I can remember it now…
Humming to myself, Rhork’s voice crackles into the space. “Can you keep up singing like this the entire solar?”
I chirp. And then I burst out laughing. “Shrov. I forgot you were listening. Isn’t there a way to turn this thing off?”
“You never answered my question. And it’stengay, nottenjay.”
“Shrov.” I repeat the word he says forlistening,then add, “Do you mean to tell me you don’t like my singing?” I gasp and immediately start to belt out the words to another song I made up. This one a much jauntier tune than the last. That one was about unrequited love.
A charged roar zings through the line. “You have got to know that singing louder doesn’t improve the quality of the pitch.”
I laugh and immediately stifle it. Like I always do.
“I hate when you do that,” he says, voice low and, I imagine, a little bit sadder than it was. Maybe notsad,but at least a little more melancholic.
My tone drops to match his, or maybe just because I don’t want Mathilda to hear me through the walls or the ceiling or the pipes or wherever. I’m lucky that she thinks I’m a madwoman because it’s already been a couple times now that she’s caught me talking out loud to Rhork, though she obviously thought that I was talking only to myself.
“Do what?”
“Sensor yourself. You stop yourself from laughing.” We both get quiet then. Questions go unasked. Their answers go unvoiced. Then he snorts and even that sounds rehearsed, far more syrupy than it should be.Syrupy, no. Another S-word, yes. This one rhymes with eventual.“You don’t stop yourself from singing though.”
“If you wanted me to stop singing, all you’d have to do is turn off the dongle.”
“Dongle?” He repeats the Human word I used and hearing him speak in Human gives me the willies.
“You speak Human weird.”
“You speak Meero weird, but I’m at least polite enough not to tell you.”
“Centare,” I laugh, stifling it again. “You correct me all the time.”
He doesn’t laugh with me like I thought he might. Instead, he sighs, “I hate it when you do that.” I don’t answer. I just wait. I don’t have anything to say. I mean, what would I say? That my sweet,runtof a grandma might come down here if she hears me and take him away? That I would hate that? That it might…that it might break me? Nah. I can’t say any of that.
I’m humming again without realizing it. At least, until Rhork clears his throat. “You can turn off the communicator by issuing the silence command.”
