Part 11 (2/2)
”J'Qhir, you have to promise that you will never do this again. If you cut yourself, you could develop an infection. We don't know that the antibiotics work on you, and even if they do, our supply is limited. You could very well die from an infection. So you have to promise that you won't do this again, ever.”
She waited while he considered her reasoning. His eyes lightened, and she thought he looked relieved. He tilted his head to one side and nodded once.
”I promissse, Leith.”
”Good.” She did not doubt his word. ”I know that it's difficult for you to go against your beliefs, but some of them just won't work here.”
His hands tightened around hers. ”Yesss. I have dissscovered thisss already,” he said, his voice barely audible. Then he spoke again the words he'd said to her before, ”I will build a lair for usss.”
Leith started to shake her head, but stopped. She didn't know why he insisted on constructing a shelter when the cave was perfect for their needs. Was there some hidden meaning to the words she couldn't decipher? She had answered in the negative each time. Perhaps he had to hear a positive answer to satisfy some Zi need she couldn't understand.
”All right, J'Qhir, you do that. When we travel south and find a place with a warmer climate, building a lair would be fine.”
His hands tightened on hers and for a moment she thought he was going to smile. He didn't, but he seemed contented with her answer.
She pulled free and wiped the perspiration from her face. ”It's so hot in here I can't breathe. I'm going to step outside while you lower the fire and-” Her gaze swept over him, head to toe and back again, and her eyes widened. ”And you, um, can get dressed.”
She turned and fled.
Outside, she headed for the stream. She splashed her face with cold water several times, was.h.i.+ng away tears and sweat, and to cool her burning face. She needed lots of cold water. She sat back on her heels and rested her forehead on her knees.
She had learned two things about the Zi. One, nudity was not taboo to them. He had stood before her not wearing a st.i.tch and didn't try to hide a thing. Two, he didn't have a thing to hide.
J'Qhir had spoken of younglings. Of course, the Zi had to procreate, but Leith had seen no evidence of how this could be accomplished. His chest was a paler solid shade of tawny, and his skin was ribbed toward his abdomen. Below, there was...nothing. She had noticed some sort of vertical decorative mark about ten centimeters in length but nothing else.
Leith sat a long time and pondered the implications of her discovery. His unique physique rendered any kind of intimacy an impossibility...and made her recent dreams pure fantasy. Just her luck, she sighed. She would get marooned on a deserted planet for the rest of her life with a being incapable of s.e.xual intimacy as she knew it. Worse, she thought she was falling in love with him.
Leith didn't know if it was love or not and decided it was a waste of time trying to decide. It didn't matter what she felt, or thought she felt, they were stuck with one another.
”We scratch a grid in the dirt, like this.” Leith drew two vertical parallel lines, then crossed them with two horizontal parallel lines.
J'Qhir carefully did the same.
”Well, we only need one grid at a time, but-” Before she could finish saying they would use his later, he quickly smoothed the dirt over his. She sighed.
”We have to keep score.” She wrote an L and drew a horizontal line after it. ”Hmmm, I have no idea how to spell your name.”
J'Qhir drew a few glyphs composed of graceful arcs and lines. Leith wrote a J beside them.
”That's how I would write the initial sound of your name.”
J'Qhir nodded. ”Like ssso.”
He painstakingly printed J'QHIR in block letters. Leith smiled. She half expected to see his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth. The letters were perfectly formed, like a child would write when practicing his alphabet.
”Terran Ssstandard,” J'Qhir proclaimed.
A fanciful name for English. Leave it to the English-speaking people of Earth to make their own language standard across the galaxy.
”Very good.” Leith then drew a C with a horizontal line beside it. ”That's for the Cat.”
J'Qhir's mouth turned down and his crest furrowed. ”Who isss the Cat?”
”It's very easy to play to a draw in this game, so when there's a tie, the Cat wins.” He still looked puzzled. ”That's the way I played it when I was a child. Youngling. It's not supposed to make sense now.”
”Ssss...”
”Now, the first one to get three X's or three O's in a row wins.”
J'Qhir quickly marked three X's diagonally across the grid. Leith clamped her lips together and tapped her stick against the bottom of her boot.
”Um, it's not a race. It's a game of strategy. We take turns.” She smoothed out the dirt and re-drew the grid. ”Since you're so eager, you go first. Do you want the X's or O's?”
Off to the side of the grid, J'Qhir precisely lettered one X and one O. He studied them a moment. ”Thessse two figuresss are diametrically opposssite.”
”They're what?”
”Diametrically opposssite. One isss a complete curve and the other isss composssed of ssstraight linesss.”
Leith bit her lip. She didn't know if she did so to keep from laughing or crying. Or slapping him upside the head. Somehow she resisted that urge.
”So they are. Do you want to play or not?”
”Yesss, Leith.” He rubbed out the two letters. ”I will ussse the X.”
He drew an X in the center of the grid. Leith drew an O in the upper right corner. J'Qhir put an X in the center right. Leith blocked him by placing an O in the center left. They continued until each had taken four turns, and there was only one square open.
”It's a tie,” Leith pointed out and made a mark beside the C.
”But there isss no way to win,” J'Qhir protested.
”Not if the first player always begins in the center square.”
”Yesss... Then what is the purpossse of the exercissse?”
”It's for children, to make them think, I suppose.” Leith rubbed out the grid and the scoreboard. She stood. ”You're no fun. I'm going to bed. Good night.”
”Good night, Leith.”
The next evening, after another long, exhausting day of hauling deadfall and scanning for potential foodstuff, Leith spent the better part of an hour creating a checkerboard in the dirt. J'Qhir watched her, completely absorbed in her actions, and didn't say a word.
His intense silence wore on her nerves, but she said nothing either. She had scratched out sixty-four squares. To differentiate between the colors, she pressed a flat piece of bark in every other square. Earlier in the day she had scoured the bank of the stream for two dozen uniform pebbles, twelve white and twelve brown. She had painted one side of each with sugarpod juice and laid them in the sun to dry to a glossy finish. They could turn one over to be ”crowned” instead of trying to balance one rounded stone atop another.
Now, Leith set the pieces on the bark squares, glazed side down. When she had all twenty-four in place, she rested her hands in her lap.
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