Awakened by the Giant: Brides of the Kindred Read online

  Maddy snorted. “Typical male attitude—blaming the women for their own problems. I guess men are men everywhere—even if they have four arms, scaly skin, and backwards-bending knees.” She looked at Calden. “No offense—you don’t seem to be like them at all.”

  “None taken. The prevailing attitude about females is the reason I had to get special permission from FATHER in order to have you here,” he said seriously. “I had to swear that you would not be sexually compatible with myself or any of the Mentats.”

  Maddy shivered. “Ugh! I can’t imagine doing that with any of those guys!”

  “You would be unable to even if you tried,” Calden remarked. “Mentats keep their organs of reproduction in a pouch under their chins.”

  “They do?” Thinking about it, Maddy realized that none of the strange, scaly aliens had appeared to have much of anything between their legs. She could tell because none of them were wearing clothes—well, except for a few who wore four-armed lab coats, that was. But a pouch under their chin? That went beyond weird. Then she had a sudden thought. “What about you?” she asked Calden. “Where do you keep your, uh, organs of reproduction?”

  The moment she asked the question she wished she could call it back. What if the big Kindred thought she was coming onto him in some way?

  But Calden answered with a straight face.

  “I keep my shaft and testicles between my legs which I am assuming is where the males of your species keep theirs as well?”

  “Well…yes.” Maddy cleared her throat and realized they were uncomfortably close again—probably because he was still carrying her. Still, why had she put her arms around his neck again even after the mean Mentat had left? She couldn’t help noticing that Calden smelled really good—not like he was wearing cologne though—he just had a spicy, warm scent that somehow made her want to get even closer.

  Making an effort, she sat up and away from him.

  “You can put me down now,” she said. “I’m not afraid and I can walk.”

  “Very well.” He put her down carefully and Maddy shivered as her bare feet touched the cold metal floor. She almost asked him to pick her up again but then she reminded herself that she was an adult and needed to act like it instead of asking to be carried like a child.

  “Okay,” she said, looking up at Calden. “Now where?”

  “I will show you the common areas first,” he decided. “And then the storage areas and the living quarters. The station is not that large—although it is built on a bigger scale than you are probably used to.”

  “It certainly is,” Maddy murmured, looking up at the ceiling which rose high above her head. But it was only about a foot from the top of Calden’s head, she saw. “It seems to be a little small for you, though,” she added as they started walking.

  He shrugged. “I am used to it by now. The Mentats are smaller than my own people but our love of learning and science is the same.”

  “I see.” Maddy was nearly panting—she had to trot to keep up with his long stride though she could tell that Calden was deliberately slowing his pace to try and match her much shorter one.

  “Here is the canteen area,” he said, motioning to a metal panel door on the left side of the hallway. It slid open at his gesture and he nodded for Maddy to accompany him inside. “It’s all right—most of the Mentats have already had Mid-day Meal so it should be almost deserted.”

  Hesitantly, Maddy followed him into a large, echoing room set with tall metal tables that reached almost to the top of her head. But there were no stools or chairs to go with them.

  “I see where they eat but where do they sit?” she asked, frowning up at Calden.

  “Mentats are able to settle back on their haunches in such a way that they form their own kind of chair,” he explained. “They can and do also sit on stools if they are doing work which takes a long period of time or deep concentration. But they do not consider this necessary during meal times, which are supposed to be short and perfunctory so that everyone can get back to work as soon as possible.”

  “Oh, I see,” Maddy murmured. She wandered around the forest of tall silver tables, standing on tiptoes once to see over one but nothing but bare tabletops greeted her curious gaze. When she came to the end of the room, though, she saw something which was much more interesting.

  Standing in the far corner of the canteen was a cluster of vast,copper caldrons—each big enough to boil an entire person in, Maddy thought uncomfortably.

  She walked closer and saw that each cauldron—there were four of them—had a different colored liquid inside it. One was filled with pale yellow broth that seemed thin and boiled briskly. The one beside it was thicker—with a pea-soup-like consistency and color. Beside that was a dark blue glop that reminded her of the slime kits her nephews loved to play with. In the last cauldron was a black sludge which barely boiled at all. It reminded Maddy of lava, the way slow bubbles formed on its thick surface and then popped almost in slow motion.

  The smell that arose from the four copper cauldrons was indescribable and not remotely edible—a mixture of cleaning products, rotten fish, melted plastic and burned hair. Maddy couldn’t understand why she hadn’t smelled it earlier, when they first came into the room. Then she heard the soft whirring of a fan and saw that there was a vent located directly above the bubbling witch’s brew of liquids.

  “Is this what you eat around here?” she asked Calden, who had followed her and was now standing quietly at her side. “Because I’m sorry but it smells terrible.”

  “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.

  “