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  “I’m inclined to agree with you,” he said, giving her a little half-smile. “Which is why I brought a lifetime supply of Kindred meal cubes when I moved here to the station. This is what the Mentats use to nourish themselves, though they do occasionally eat solid foods as well. But drinking is quicker and allows them to get back to work faster.”

  “Wow, you guys must all be a bunch of raging workaholics,” Maddy muttered. She loved working with animals but she couldn’t imagine gulping down her meal in liquid form so she could go rushing back to the veterinary clinic as soon as possible.

  “We simply love what we do. The pursuit of knowledge is its own reward,” Calden said quietly. “Oh, excuse us, Grack-lor” he added to someone else as he pulled Maddy out of the way.

  A Mentat came lumbering up with its peculiar swaying stride. It was larger than the others they’d seen—almost as tall as Calden himself and twice as massive across its burly chest. Maddy found herself leaning close to the big Kindred again instinctively. Though he was alien, he wasn’t nearly as weird as the Mentats who really gave her the creeps. With their four arms, huge, liquid-black eyes, and backwards-bending knees they resembled nothing so much as huge, mutant grasshoppers, she thought.

  Calden put one long, muscular arm around her and pulled her close to his side. Maddy’s head only came up to the bottom of his ribcage and she felt a little like a toddler hiding behind its mother’s skirts. But even so, she didn’t move away—there was something about this Grack-lor Mentat that put her nerves on edge.

  “Greetings, Calden,” the Mentat said in a harsh, deep voice like someone scraping a shovel over gravel. “And who is this you have with you?” He bent to peer at Madeline and she didn’t like the way his blank, black eyes narrowed as they took her in.

  “This is Madeline—a female from…” Calden looked down at Maddy. “I am sorry—where did you say your home planet was again?”

  “Earth,” she whispered through dry lips. She really didn’t like the way Grack-lor was looking at her. It gave her the urge to cover herself and made her wish more than ever that she had on underwear under the too-big shirt-dress she wore. “My home planet was Earth.”

  “Thank you. From Earth,” Calden finished.

  “A female specimen, eh?” Grack-lor ran a long, slippery tongue the color of raw liver over his thin, lipless mouth and Maddy noticed that he seemed to have a strange swelling about the same color under his narrow chin.

  “I was given special permission from FATHER.” Calden’s arm tightened around her. “With the understanding that she is not in any way sexually compatible with any of the Mentats.”

  “Not sexually compatible, eh?” Grack-lor ran his long tongue over his lipless mouth again. “And how would we know that unless we try?”

  As he spoke, a long, snake-like appendage suddenly dropped from the pouch under his chin. It was mottled black and maroon-red and it twitched like a blind worm, though it was considerably larger. In fact, Maddy estimated it was probably about the size of a large rattlesnake as it curled and writhed in the empty air between them.

  Suddenly she remembered what Calden had said about the Mentats keeping their organ of reproduction in the pouch under their chin. Was this big asshole actually showing her his dick? Disgusting! Again she was reminded that men were men everywhere—no matter what species they were, apparently.

  Calden seemed to be thinking along the same lines because he pushed Maddy half-way behind him, putting himself between her and the Mentat protectively.

  “Put your tokk away, Grack-lor,” he said, his voice dropping to a warning growl. “And do not speak of hurting or violating Madeline again or I will make you sorry. Your behavior is unspeakably rude and also against the rules that FATHER has laid down for the station.”

  “FATHER doesn’t know everything,” the big Mentat said. But the seeking, twitching, mottled dick-thing that Calden had called a “tokk” curled itself up and nestled into the pouch under his chin again as he spoke. He turned without another word to them and busied himself at the bubbling copper cauldrons.

  There was a stack of metal cups to one side of the huge pots and Maddy watched, half fascinated, half revolted, as the Mentat quickly filled four of them—each with a different liquid. He clutched a cup in each one of his four, many-fingered hands and drank greedily, gulping from them all in turn, alternating in some pattern she couldn’t decode. He wasn’t too neat about it either—soon his scaly, gray-green chest was covered in yellow, green, blue, and black streaks and his lipless mouth was ringed in smeary colors like bizarre lipstick.

  “Come,” Calden said quietly and they turned to go. Just as they got to the door, however, Grack-lor spoke again.

  “Better watch out for your little female, Calden,” he rasped in his metal-scraping-against-gravel voice. “FATHER doesn’t see everything either and the fact that you have a female to breed while every other male aboard this station doesn’t, won’t go over well with my brethren.”

  “Madeline is not here for breeding purposes,” Calden shot back. “She is going to teach me about her culture and the animals and plants indigenous to Earth.”

  “Of course she will. And when she’s done imparting all this valuable knowledge, she’ll part her legs and her lips for your tokk and take your seed deep inside that sweet, curvy little body of hers.” Grack-lor laughed—a thick burbling that reminded Maddy of the bubbling black scum in the last copper caldron.

  His words had a definite effect on Calden. For the first time she saw the big Kindred really angry. His topaz eyes glowed red and his brows drew low, his full lips narrowing to a white line.

  “If you dare to speak like that about Madeline again, you’ll answer to me, Grack-lor.” His voice was a deep, menacing growl and his big hands were clenched into fists the size of her head at his sides. “This is your first and only warning. You will treat her with respect or I will teach you how to be respectful. I promise you will not find the lesson pleasant.”

  Grack-lor’s black eyes narrowed and he took a step forward. Calden started to meet him but Maddy put a hand on the big Kindred’s arm.

  “Come on, Calden—this is what he wants,” she murmured. She’d seen enough pissing contests between male colleagues back home to understand male posturing when she saw it. “He’s just trying to upset you. Let it go—it’s not worth it.”

  Calden took a deep breath and seemed to make a visible effort to calm down which was a relief to Maddy—she’d never seen him be anything but calm and collected from the moment he’d caught her while she tried to climb out of the slime tank. Watching him go into angry, protective male-mode was alarming, especially considering how big he was.

  “All right,” he said, speaking to Madeline but keeping his eyes on the belligerent Grack-lor. “Let’s continue the tour.”

  They left the canteen but as they did, Maddy heard a deep, burbling laugh floating out behind them. She shivered and promised herself to keep well away from the big Mentat. He was seven miles of bad road, as her grandmother had used to say, and even with Calden to protect her, she didn’t want anything to do with the nasty alien.

  Five

  Calden had to take deep breaths to try and calm himself as they continued down the hallway, away from the canteen. How dare that big bastard, Grack-lor, speak so insultingly of his female? How dare he threaten and degrade Madeline? Calden himself might not know much about females—most all of the last ones of his people had died out before he himself was born. But he did know they were to be treated with respect, protected and cared for. Never hurt or threatened or insulted the way Grack-lor had done.

  Mine—she’s mine. How dare he say such things to her?

  It occurred to Calden that it was a strangely possessive way to feel about a specimen. He had never felt such things before—everything in the station, including whatever specimens he grew in his lab—was supposed to be communal property. The idea was that since all knowledge was valuable, every tool and asset used to acquire t