Stardust Dreams (15 page)

Mar and Dot both wished
them luck, although Dot sounded considerably less enthusiastic.

Gallant opened the hatch
and a wave of oppressive heat lapped over Cherry. As she waited for the stairs
to telescope their way down to the ground, she noted the red haze on the
horizon where the sun had recently set. She couldn't begin to imagine how hot
it must be during full sunlight.

"Go down slowly,"
Gallant instructed her. "I'll be close behind. But after that, be careful
to stay a step or two behind me… and keep your eyes downcast whatever you
do."

She turned and clucked her
tongue at him when she reached the ground. "You don't have to tell me how
to play a slave girl. I've done it thousands of times. Being lord and master
over a helpless woman is apparently a universal male fantasy.
But"
—she
wagged her finger at him—"like I told you before, don't get carried away
with your role."

Instead of looking
threatened, he winked at her. "I promise to whip you only if it becomes
absolutely necessary to prove my manhood to the locals."

"Very funny! Can we
just get this over with, please?" She readjusted the collar and lifted the
chain a little higher, "This rig isn't getting any lighter."

Gallant frowned and gently
touched her neck. "Your skin's already rubbed pink. I'm sorry. I didn't
think about that. Let's go back and put some kind of padding inside."

He started to go up the
stairs again, but she gave the chain a yank. When he almost fell, she laughed
out loud. "How about that? This thing works both ways. Forget the padding.
A heartless master would hardly think of such a kindness. Anyway, what's a
little irritation if I can help save the universe?" The concerned
expression on his face was so sincere that she knew she had just gotten another
glimpse of the real Gallant Voyager. That confirmation of his secretly
sensitive nature went a long way toward relaxing her. "Come on, before
someone besides me figures out your wicked reputation is mostly hype."

The rust-colored ground
beneath her feet was hard as marble and had cracks large enough to trip in. She
was having to be so careful about where she was walking she didn't notice the
gruesome display at the edge of the camp until she was right next to it. Staked
out on the ground were two skeletons.

"A not-so-subtle
warning to unwelcome visitors," Gallant told her. "If an offender is
lucky, he'll get put out here in the middle of the day. That way, he only lasts
about two or three hours before he's completely dehydrated, and he's not alive
to see the ugly little creatures that come crawling around after dark to clean
his bones."

Cherry shivered, both from
the image his words created and the noticeable change in the temperature. The
red haze was gone now, and it was getting darker by the minute. Gallant paused
when they reached the inner circle of the windowless buildings, and Cherry
cautiously halted a bit behind him, in case anyone was watching.

Picture signs hung above
the front doors of several of the nearby structures. While she couldn't
identify all the symbols on the signs, a few were generic enough for her to
understand, such as the one with the depiction of two animals mating.

Gallant led her to a
building with three different-shaped drinking glasses on its sign—obviously the
neighborhood tavern.

Inside, it was cool and
dimly lit, but Cherry's eyes soon adjusted. With the simple wooden bar and
roomful of scarred tables and chairs, it could have been a tavern in any small
town in the United States… except for the bartender and the four patrons
sitting in the far corner.

If she didn't know better,
she might have guessed that they were dressed up for Halloween. The bar-tender
made Cherry think of an octopus. Eight tentaclelike appendages extended out in
a circle from the upper body, and an oversized head had two bulbous eyes
protruding from opposite sides. She thought those characteristics could certainly
come in handy for a bartender.

As Gallant sauntered toward
the bar with her in tow, Cherry took another peek at the group in the corner. They
were more humanoid in structure than the bartender, and seemed vaguely familiar
to her. With their skinny, elongated arms and legs, and slanted, black,
almond-shaped eyes, they looked like the drawings of aliens that used to be
shown on American television programs about UFO's. It was too bad she could
never tell anyone they really existed. Then she remembered the stories of
abductions and experiments and knew those creatures weren't as harmless as they
appeared.

"Stars above, it's
Gallant Voyager!" the bartender exclaimed in a very feminine voice.

Cherry wondered if the
bartender was truly a female or if the translator she was wearing beneath the
slave collar merely interpreted the voice that way. Her curiosity was settled a
moment later when a tentacle whipped out, wrapped around Gallants neck and
pulled him close enough for her to plant a loud kiss on his mouth. Cherry had
to fight the urge to wipe her own lips after the creature released him.

"It's been a while,
Kip," Gallant said with a broad smile.

"I've missed you,
handsome. Where have you been?"

"You name it, I've
been there."

"And picked yourself
up a pet, I see. For some reason, I thought you had an objection to
slavery." A tentacle uncurled and tipped up Cherry's chin.

Cherry let herself be
inspected without meeting the bartender's gaze.

Gallant smirked. "I
won her in a game of cubit and only found out how untrained she was after her
former master took off."

"Where did you get
her?"

"Innerworld,
Earth," Gallant stated in a slightly raised voice.

"She's a
Noronian?"

"Terran," Gallant
said a bit louder.

Suddenly the murmurs from
the back of the room ceased, and Cherry knew without looking that they now had
the undivided attention of that group.

Kip gracefully recoiled the
tentacle. "If you want to get rid of her, I'm sure the Finites over there
would pay you a fair price. You know how they love their Terran
specimens."

Gallant nodded.
"That's a thought. I'll let you know if I decide to let her go, and you
can handle the negotiations. For now, how about setting us both up with
refreshers?"

Cherry kept telling herself
he was only acting, but the way the four Finites were staring at her made her
very uneasy. She inched closer to Gallant.

Kip set two tall glasses of
bubbling green sludge on the bar and waved for them to drink up. Gallant picked
up one glass, toasted Kip, and handed Cherry the other. She could barely
conceal her disgust as he took a long swallow and signaled for her to do the
same. She held her breath and took a sip. Though she had never actually tasted
nuclear waste, she was certain it was similar to this.

"Drink more than that,
woman," Kip ordered. "It's the only thing that will help your body
tolerate the lack of moisture on this planet."

Cherry stared into the
gurgling slime, then gave Gallant a pleading look.

'Try holding your nose and
gulping it all down at once," he said without sympathy.

Even the small amount she
had drunk seemed to be eroding her esophagus. When he made a move to hold her
nose for her, she pushed his hand aside and forced herself to take three large
swallows. Gingerly, she placed the glass back on the bar while she concentrated
on not gagging.

"She does tell a good
bedtime story though," Gallant declared as if it just occurred to him that
she had some value.

"Oh?"

He took another drink that
almost emptied his glass. "Yes, indeed. You know Frezlo, don't you?" Kip
nodded. "She claims she saw him incinerate a Weebort trader in Innerworld,
in front of a dozen witnesses, then casually walk away."

"Frezlo's been known
to do that, depending on the urgency of the situation."

Gallant leaned forward as
if to confide a vital secret.
"But,
she says the Weebort told her
something important right before he died. Now, you and I both know, if that was
true, Frezlo would have eliminated her as well."

Cherry knew that was the
bait he had come here to dangle, and the way Kip was now eyeing her said the
story had captured her attention. She only hoped Kip could get the message to
Frezlo quickly… before she exploded with nervous energy, or died from that vile
drink.

As more customers came in,
Kip was kept busy serving and gossiping. A few recognized Gallant and greeted
him, but none were as friendly as Kip. Most of them were humanoids, and Cherry
tried not to stare at those that weren't, but one patron caught her gaze from
across the room and she couldn't make herself look away. Her instincts told her
it was a male, and the lizard skin identified him as reptilian even before she
saw his yellow, snakelike eyes.

He came toward her in a
smooth movement that made him appear to be gliding on air. A peculiar heaviness
began seeping into her limbs as he drew closer, and her first thought was that
the drink was causing the lethargic sensation. But it was the way she was
unable to separate her gaze from the reptile's that worried her enough to nudge
Gallant.

A split second later, Gallant
slapped her face so hard she staggered backward.

Without considering the
consequences, she raised her robotic arm and swung at him, but he easily dodged
the blow. The sound of a roomful of male laughter brought her to her senses
before she attacked again.

Quickly shortening the
length of chain between them, Gallant whispered, "Get down," then
made it look like he was forcing her to her knees at his feet. "I told you
to keep your eyes lowered." In a more audible voice, he demanded,
"Beg forgiveness, woman."

Her cheek was hot where he
had struck it, and she was seething with fury. Until she looked directly at
him. He had turned his back on their audience so that they couldn't see the
regretful look in his eye, or the way his mouth silently formed the word,
Please.

She glared at him for
another second, sending back her own silent message. If they ever got out of
here, she was going to make him pay through the nose. "I forgot. I'm
sorry," she mumbled through clenched teeth.