The animal yowled at him from a doorway leading deeper into the house. When it saw it had attracted Tagen’s attention, it turned and moved off at a rapid waddle, making urgent little sounds as it went. Tagen put the disc-container he was holding down on the low table in the middle of the room and went to follow the creature.
He paused to open every door he passed and found two small storage spaces and another privy, but eventually he ended in a large room lined with wooden cupboards, all of them rubbed to a high gloss. The smell of cleanser was here as well, not as strong as it was in the bathing room, but Tagen suspected it would be if only this room had doors to shut the odor in. As it was, Tagen could stand in the center of this room and see out into the hall or over into what he imagined was a dining room. There was one door at the far end of the room, but he left it for now to better examine his present surroundings.
There was a small table against the near wall, with a chair pushed out before it at an angle that suggested the human who sat it had just risen and walked away. Atop the table, a computer idled. Its processing unit and monitor might have come from any museum on Jota, and its keyboard, although too wide and with keys too small for Jotan hands, was easily recognizable as well. Tagen ran his eyes over the unfamiliar characters and symbols that faced the keys, then reached out and tapped one with a claw. The monitor blinked on at once, showing him the image of a rolling hill under an azure sky, as well as a number of unknowable icons.
The animal was rubbing frantically at his leg, making its urgent yowling plea and slapping at him with its soft paws. Tagen allowed himself to be distracted, and as soon as it had his attention, it turned and ran across the room, its round belly swaying at its knees.
The floor was tiled, and not quite empty. The animal had gone straight to a mat in the corner, where two bowls stood. One was half-filled with water. The other was empty, and it was there that the creature stood, making plaintive noises and lashing its long tail.
Tagen began to open cupboards. He found dishes, food packaging, and devices which, although unfamiliar in design, appeared to relate to the storing or preparation of food. He was in the kitchen. Once he was comfortable with that, he could almost see how the bulky appliances scattered among the cupboards might be used for cooking. His inspection was greatly curtailed, however, by the persistent attentions of the creature.
Tagen moved from shelf to shelf until he found a neat stack of tins that had images similar to the creature’s head printed on them. The pitch of the animal’s cries became more intense as soon as Tagen picked one of the tins up, and it ran over to rub on his ankles.
There was an obvious tab on the top of the tin. Tagen got a claw into it and pulled the tin open easily. The contents were mushy and unappealing, but the smell of meat was strong enough to make Tagen’s stomach clench hungrily. He was tempted to taste it, but the animal’s distress was growing to extreme levels, and so Tagen settled for shaking the stuff out into the empty dish on the floor. The animal dove in head-first, and Tagen stepped back to give it room. That was a rurr’ga all right, or the Earth version of it, at least.
Tagen left it eating. There was one door remaining unopened in this house and he wanted no surprises. His own hunger would have to wait.
The last door opened on a utility room of sorts, containing the large appliances and shelves for alien tools that a residence of this size required to be maintained. Like all the other rooms, excusing the one Tagen had chosen to enter through, it had been rigorously cleaned and tidied. Soiled clothing was contained in a sealed bin; building and repair materials were crated and neatly placed on shelves; there was even a long industrial table filled with potted plants, and not so much as a speck of dirt out of place. On the furthest wall was another door leading outside, and that was all there was to the house.
So. Many rooms, many chairs, two privies, but only one bed. Tagen deduced that the human he had seen leave this house was the sole inhabitant. An inhabitant with a great deal of empty time on its hands. ‘And,’ thought Tagen, looking around at all the blunt, heavy, and sharp objects the utility room contained, ‘a human with plenty of improvised weapons at hand.’
He’d better take care of that. Tagen returned to the front room, unshouldered his pack and set it on the low table. He removed the dermisprayer and slipped it into his belt where it was close at hand. Then, starting in the kitchen where the most obvious weapons were, he began to get ready for the human’s return.
*
He had nearly finished his second sweep through the house (taking everything he deemed even remotely dangerous up to the storage room, reasoning that it was already cluttered as hell) when he heard the human’s groundcar returning. Tagen hurried downstairs, the dermisprayer in his hand, and pressed himself to the wall beside the door, waiting.
The human never saw him coming. It stepped inside, its hands occupied with papers, its attention diverted, and Tagen merely reached out and injected it. The human’s head lifted, it started to turn, and then it just kept turning, dropping bonelessly to the floor at the same time.
Surprise provoked instinct; Tagen caught it without thinking. He held it awkwardly in his hands at arm’s length as its eyes rolled and its limbs splayed. The Human Studies scientist had called this a mild sedative? This didn’t look very mild to Tagen.
“I’ve killed it,” he said sourly. “Shit.”
The human moaned, its mouth moving, and managed to utter a badly-mangled attempt at “Shit,” in Jotan, no less.
Tagen’s brows raised. Switching to N’Glish, he said, “Human, can you hear me?”
The human’s feet tried to get under it, but it couldn’t quite manage. “I can hear you,” it said. Its voice was slow and dolorous, as though it were talking in its sleep.
Up close, he could see the human’s face was very smooth and there was something vaguely feminine about it. That meant nothing, really; as a whole, humans tended to have much softer features than Jotan, regardless of their gender. A cautious sniff gave him no further clues, but Tagen was inclined to think this one was female. It had the fleshy swellings on its chest that were usually, if not always, indicative of females. It would be easy enough to reach down and feel it out to be sure, but he didn’t. Even if the human were conscious, such an action would be tremendously crude, but in the state the human was in, Tagen felt slightly obscene even to have the thought.
He decided the time had come to make introductions. “My name is Tagen Pahnee,” he said.
The human did not reply. Then again, he hadn’t asked a question. “Tell me your name,” he ordered.
The human tried again to stand and this time, it made it. “Lindaria Cleavon,” it said, still in that slow, drugged tone. It rolled its eyes towards Tagen and stared at him without expression, swaying on its feet.
“Are you a female?” Tagen asked.
“Yep.” The human nodded at the same time, demonstrating that ‘yep’ was just another way of saying ‘yes.’
Tagen paced a few steps around her, willing himself to become easy in his mind. She was a small thing. Her head did not even come to his shoulder. And she was slender as a reed, her form so different from the muscled frame of a Jotan female. Her face, fine-boned and pale, had been sculpted to a delicate perfection; the left half had been ornamented by a fine interlace of white markings. Her hair, long and glossy and brown, rippled as she moved her head back and forth to watch him. She was smiling, a sleepy child’s smile, completely without comprehension.