Total pages in book: 159
Estimated words: 144433 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 722(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144433 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 722(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Okay, not a kidnapping plot. Thank god for that.
I approach the crate, covered with alien markings of all kinds. It sure looks big for a house cat. Then again, I didn't specify “house cat,” did I? I just said “cat.” Now I'm getting visions of me and a pet tiger, just hanging out at my homestead. I don't know if I'm horrified or excited. I've heard humans taste pretty bad, so I don't think he'd eat me, but who knows. Surely Simone's friend wouldn't send me a man-eating cat. Surely.
But this crate is enormous. It's easily the size of a banquet table, maybe eight feet long, and three feet wide. I approach it with my silly empty bag on my shoulder and think of the cat bed I made for it in my bedroom. Clearly I needed to think bigger.
"That's okay," I tell myself. "A big pet cat is still a pet cat." I run my hand over the side of the box, looking for a panel to open it since there's no way I'm going to be able to carry something like this out of the building. There's a button that depresses when I touch it, and then the lid automatically lifts up and to the side, steam rolling out now that the seal has been broken.
I cough, waving a hand in front of my face, and as it clears, I start to see my cat. I see tufted triangular ears and what looks like a snowy pale face the size of a tiger, all right. The nose is pink and triangular, and thick fur fluffs about the cheeks and jowls. I touch one of the whiskers to make sure it's real, but it feels like a whisker, all right. There's even an earring on one of the pointed ears, and I reach out to touch it, wondering if it's an ID of some kind.
Before I can touch the earring, a hand wraps around my wrist, and the eyes of the tiger open. He glares at me, furious. "What do you think you're doing, female?"
Uh oh. I've got the wrong package.
This isn't my cat. This is a cat alien.
CHAPTER
FOUR
ZHURRRVAS
I wake up from the stasis sleep with a pounding headache and someone touching my whiskers.
The sheer rudeness of it. No one touches a male's whiskers without permission. No one.
But then the thief reaches for my earring, and I put a stop to that nonsense. I will not tolerate thievery. Not when I've already taken off most of my adornments. Does this thief expect me to walk around bare and without a single bit of jewelry? What a savage.
I grab the hand even as I open my eyes and see a small human female standing over me. She's got a dark mane and a pale face and fragile bones. I could snap the wrist in my grasp without thinking twice, but I'm not the sort to hurt women. Not even thieving women. "What do you think you're doing, female?"
She gives me a puzzled look, as if I'm asking something ridiculous, her hairless little face screwing up. "I'm looking for my cat."
"And you think it's in my earring?" I sit up, annoyed that she hasn't even bothered to come up with a good lie. A quick glance around shows that I'm in a cheap apartment of some kind, with very little in the way of furnishings. The walls are bare. The room is as small as my jewelry closet back home at the palace, and the sight is depressing. Is this what I can expect now, in exile? A life of poverty and paupery? I'm tempted to lie back down in the stasis pod and wait to wake up in another ten or twenty years while the stasis liquids ice over my brain synapses. It's a better alternative than this. Ugh.
"Well, no, I don't think it's in your earring," she says, stepping to the side. "At first I thought you were my cat because I really didn't specify what kind of cat. Looking back, I'm guessing that was a mistake. I thought maybe you were a pet tiger of some kind. A space tiger."
I stare at her as she rambles.
She continues on, oblivious to my annoyance. "And then I saw the earring and I thought, huh, that doesn't look like an ID tag. Back home our pets have ID tags so if they get lost, you know who to contact. Of course, you're not lost, right? You were supposed to come down here...well, if you were my space tiger."
Space...tiger. The human is clearly simple in the brain. Is this the servant I'm supposed to meet? Zebah's instructions were clear. I would be in stasis so I wouldn't leave a DNA trail or any sort of bio signal that could be followed. I would be taken to the practically uninhabited Risda III, which is owned by a mesakkah lord as some sort of vacation planet. There, I would meet a human servant who would see to my needs and keep me in comfort while I wait for the uprising back home to die down. But it seems as if this human is expecting something else. "Where is Zebah?" I demand. "I need to speak to her."