In Situ (17 page)

Ra’a stole a quick look at
the water and the food. The smell of them was almost overwhelming. She was torn. It was extremely bad manners for an Arzat to ask a host for anything; it had to be offered. She waited, hoping that this “Pete” creature would get the hint and invite her to drink. Finally, when she could stand it no longer she asked, blushing with embarrassment as she did so. “Tell me, Pete son of Robert, who might the water be for?”

“Oh, of course,” Pete said, recovering from his stupor. “I brought this for you.”
He gently removed the top from the plastic jug and pushed it towards the dinosaur along with the bowl full of meat and fruit.

“In what way does your species express gratitude?” Ra’a asked, relieved that she had apparently not offended.
She carefully removed the meat and the odd looking fruit from the bowl and placed the items on the floor, doing her best not to look too anxious, then carefully poured the water into the large container. She picked up the bowl with both hands and took a long sip.

“We say ‘thank you’,” said Pete, watching her intently, amazed that the plastic jug seemed to pose no problem at all for the creature to deal with.
She had deftly picked it up with one of her large hands and poured half the water into the bowl. Ra’a quickly drank the contents, then poured the rest of the water from the jug, and began to carefully sip again.

“Thank you
, Pete,” Ra’a said with her mind, testing the term even as she drank. “I was extremely thirsty.”

“You are welcome,” Pete said silently back,
still in shock.

Ra’a looked at Pete carefully as she sipped.
“Now tell me, Pete son of Robert, why do many of your friends seem to refer to you as ‘Doc’?”

“Oh, it’s just a nickname,” Pete immediately replied, shocked, wondering where she had heard it.
Then it occurred to him that she must have been able to detect Paula’s voice through his headset! Oh my god. How the heck do I explain what a ‘nickname’ is? “It’s short for Doctor. Easier to say,” Pete added to try to clarify.

“Yes, it is much the same in my language,” Ra’a said, setting the empty bowl back down on the floor.
“We have many ways of referring to certain people. My given name, for example, was very difficult for my younger siblings to pronounce correctly, so when we were very little—instead of Ra’a—they simply called me ‘Ara.’ It means ‘the wind’ in my tongue, which they thought was very amusing until I proved to be faster than all of them. You may call me that if you wish.”

“Ara,” Pete tried to pronounce it aloud.

Ara slapped her thigh and laughed. “See, much easier, isn’t it?” She looked down at the food on the floor and then back at Pete. “I hope you have a way to cook that meat, Pete, son of Richard.”

Pete suddenly found himself speechless again.

*

In the gallery above, Paula had located Batter and sat with him as the events transpired below. Since Pete had removed his headphones, there wasn’t much more she could do other than watch and hope he wasn’t killed.

“I actually think he is communicating with her somehow,” Paula said, looking down, shaking her head in disbelief.

“I agree.” Batter said.
At any other time in his life, he might have had the luxury of being as fascinated at this discovery as everyone else, but unfortunately, he had an impatient President to deal with and a lot of work to do.

“As soon as he gets out of there, have him find me,” he said to her, heading for the stairs.

Alex watched Gus disappear from her rearview mirror as she slowly drove the truck around the first hill on the way down to the ranch house. The road was not paved, just a gravel path worn smooth with two distinctive ruts from years of carts and cars rolling down it. The main house itself was about a quarter of a mile from the gate.

Alex was worried
, but she knew Mot must be somewhere close. She stopped the truck when she was sure she was far enough to be completely out of Gus’s potential line of sight and stepped out. When she turned to look back down the road she was startled to see Mot right behind her. He had come out of nowhere.

“Jesus, Mot! You scared the crap out of me!”

“I am sorry, Alex. I was worried I might not catch up with you.”

“Well, that’s
hardly likely,” she said, calmer now that she had found him.

“I am a very fast r
unner, but not as fast as your good ole truck,” Mot said so matter-of-factly that Alex laughed.

“Yes, Mot, that might be true.
But you see-my house is right down the hill there.” Alex pointed.

“What are those animals?”
Mot had smelled them long before he’d seen them. He was still very hungry and whatever they were they smelled delicious.

Alex squinted down the road, trying to figure out what Mot was referring too.
“What? Oh, that is just Billy and Bobby. They’re horses that I keep for the ranch. Mr. Garcia comes and feeds them every day when I am not here.” Alex made a mental note to call Mrs. Garcia and tell her that she had returned. The last thing in the world she needed was for Garcia to find Mot! Talk about a heart attack. “And no, Mot, they are not to eat,” she added. “Come on, jump in and I will take you down.”

As Mot squeezed back into the truck, he was still gazing in the direction of Billy and Bobby.
“You mean none of your kind eats those animals?”

“Well, they are
OK for eating, but they are much better for riding.”

“Riding?”

Alex just smiled, she was going to have to teach Mot everything, and she loved the idea.

The house was a classic western two story, which was one of the many things Alex liked about it.
The front door was right in the middle of the bottom story, which included a covered porch and identical windows on either side. Just to the left of the house was a corral and a large barn, and just past them another building that was the high point of the ranch, her father’s old library and lab.

As she pulled in, Alex
realized she had underestimated the horse situation, not from Mot’s point of view, but from the horses themselves. Billy and Bobby were stirred up, trotting back and forth and a making a lot of noise. They were so nervous they looked like they were about to try to bolt from their corral.

“Wow, they are all jacked up over you
, Mot. Stay here for a second.”

Alex slid out of the truck and walked to the corral, speaking in a calming voice to Billy and Bobby.
Both of them were excellent ranch horses and they were used to a rattler or the scent of a mountain lion, but that didn’t mean they had to like it, or that they wouldn’t react if they sensed a predator. She pulled some sugar from a stash she had by the barn and eventually got them both to the fence and calmed. They happily licked the sugar cubes out of Alex’s hand and relaxed. Might as well try to get them used to Mot right now or there will be no rest for any of us, she thought to herself. She left the horses and went back to the truck.

“O
K, Mot, let’s go see how we do together with these guys. We have to get them to calm down around you.”

Mot got out of the truck and took a big sn
iff of the desert air, flicking to get the full flavor of it. He stopped for a moment to see what he could feel in the earth: the large animals, Alex, something much lighter scampering away somewhere beyond the wooden structures and some other very small animals foraging about. But there was something else. He could feel another presence close by, but he just couldn’t identify it. Mot wasn’t sure if it was dangerous or not, but Alex didn’t seem to be worried, so he followed her, sniffing the air along the way.

As t
hey walked towards the corral, Alex was speaking out loud in a very different voice than Mot was used to. Her tone reminded him of his mother for some reason. The horses settled and stayed calm. And even when Mot got very close, the horses, while bothered, remained relatively quiet. Alex was a little confused because she had expected Billy and Bobby to get a little more worked up over Mot when he got near them, until the cougar made a break for it.

First, there had been an otherworldly growl, low
and angry, and then the cat rolled out from behind a corner of the corral and ran swiftly for the desert. The horses had seen it, Alex had seen it, and Mot had instantly disappeared after it. Billy and Bobby went nuts, and Alex had her hands full trying to calm them again. Good thing I don’t have a dog, she thought, as she worked to sooth the two horses.

Mot eventually returned
, walking swiftly back from the direction the cat had taken. Alex was relieved when she saw that he didn’t have the cougar slung over his shoulder.

“The creature
got away,” Mot said as he approached, obviously disappointed.

“Well, they are very fast,”
Alex said, still wondering what the cat had been up to.

“Yes, I was onl
y able to catch this part of it.” Mot reached out and showed Alex a bloody wad that must have been the tip of the cougar’s tail. “If I had my hunting stick it would not have escaped,” Mot said. He appeared to be only mildly out of breath. “I am sorry, Alex, if I knew the animals of your world better, I might have detected it sooner. It is obviously a predator.”

Alex blanched as she reluctantly took the tail
. Something else to bury, she thought. “Well fortunately there aren’t very many species we need to worry about around here. Come on inside and I will fix us both something to eat and then, I don’t know about you Mot, but I have to sleep.”

“I would like to sleep
, but I am very hungry, Alex.”

Alex disposed of the
cougar tail, and took Mot into the house, his huge bulk barely clearing the front door. There was a straight flight of stairs that lead to four bedrooms on the top floor with one bath. Downstairs, there was a parlor on one side, a large kitchen on the other, and another bath. Alex had been around this house in one fashion or another for almost twenty years, so she was pretty certain that the chest freezer on the back porch would be full of Garcia’s venison. She was delighted to see that she was not wrong when she opened it. She grabbed what she thought must be four or five pounds of meat. Glancing over at Mot, who was watching her every move, she thought better of it, and pulled out another five pounds and threw it on the counter.

“Well Mot, let me just get some dinner started and then I can show you around.”
Alex unwrapped the meat from its white butcher paper and dumped it in a large pan and turned on the heat. This was not going to be a gourmet meal; she was more concerned with quantity than quality.

Mot was looking at everything at once and following Alex’s every move.

She pointed at the oven and stove top. “This gets very hot, like a bigger version of the one I had in the truck. We cook almost everything on one of these.”

“What is it called
, Alex?”

“A stove.”

“Stove.” Alex could hear Mot attempt to repeat the word aloud and she could hear him saying it in her head. She realized, or suddenly remembered, that she and Mot were communicating almost entirely non-verbally.

“Come on, I’ll show you the house.
This is our version of what I believe was your cave.”

“Yes
, Alex. It was far too dangerous to live outside of the caves. This would never keep out the predators of my world,” Mot said, stooping over to peer out the windows and gently testing the wooden walls with his enormous hands.

“Well, we don’t have anything like the kind of animals you had to face
, and most of the ones we do have are usually frightened of humans, and they do their best to avoid us.”

Mot just grunted a reply, completely distracted by the details of Alex’ home as they walked through it.

Alex showed Mot the parlor and made a mental note to come back later and remove the dinosaur movie she had been most recently watching from the DVD player. That is the last thing I need him seeing, she thought, as if Mot could figure out how to work the thing by himself.

As she led him upstairs,
Alex tried to do a quick mental inventory of the house, wondering what else it might be wise to hide from Mot. She quickly gave up, realizing that the entire place was packed with dinosaur paraphernalia.

When she showed Mot the
upstairs bath, she was rigorously questioned about the toilet’s function and operation. “We had something very similar in the caves, Alex, water running through,” he said, studying it intently. Mot turned to her. “I will use this toilet,” he announced.

Alex laughed.
“OK, Mot, just don’t forget to put the lid back down.”

“I do not understand Alex.”

“Oh never mind. Come back down when you are done and I will feed you,” she said, walking toward the stairs to give him some privacy.

Alex went back to the kitchen
. She was pleased to see that the venison was thawing in the pan and already beginning to brown. She turned up the heat, searing it lightly, and proceeded to cook the entire lot of it until it was quite well done. Alex figured there was enough for ten very hungry people. When she had finished thoroughly cooking the meat and dicing it up, she placed the overflowing plate in front of Mot. His tongue flicked. “Can I get you anything else with that?” she asked, smiling at the dinosaur.

“What about you
, Alex?” Mot asked, focused on the meat.

“Oh, I couldn’t eat a thing.”
Alex felt full just from cooking the massive dinner.

She grabbed a chair and watched as Mot nearly finished the
entire plate. Alex hadn’t thought to offer him a chair or any utensils and Mot hadn’t asked, polishing off the venison with gusto as he stood at the counter. As if he hadn’t eaten in a million years, Alex thought, amusing herself as she watched him. She was so tired she was almost falling asleep.

“Thank you
, Alex,” she heard him say and she realized that she had dozed.

“
Mot, I have to go to sleep,” Alex said, fighting to rise from her seat. “I bet you are tired too. You can sleep wherever you wish, just please do not leave the house without telling me. We will be safe I am sure. OK?” As she spoke, she rinsed what was left of dinner into the sink, and set the plate on the counter. Alex turned back towards him, “Mot, it is very important that you stay here in the house, OK?”

“Yes
, Alex. I understand.”

Alex felt like she should call Tom, but she was just too tired. She climbed up the stairs and fell into bed with her clothes on
. Her alarm clock indicated 6:33 p.m. It had been a long 24 hours. She fell instantly into a deep sleep.

Mot wandered the house for a while, looking around at everything with great fascination. Finally, when he got drowsy, he walked quietly up the stairs
, and went to sleep in front of Alex’s door.