Morgan's Choice Read Online Free PDF Page B

Sayvu was
good. A nice girl conducting language lessons and at the same time
learning an awful lot about them. She’d shown them a hologram of
the galaxy to find out where the two humans had come from but he
hadn’t known and Selwood couldn’t pick anything out, either. Or if
she did, she hid it well. They asked about the first alien ships,
too. But neither of them had anything useful to say about that.
    Then it was where were you born? What’s
your job? Whose is the body in the cargo hold? How did he die? Who
killed him? The same questions, repeated often, phrased in
different ways.
    He still wondered if they believed him. How
do you explain to aliens that the ship’s captain and navigator were
drug-runners who had tried to swindle their contacts?
    The stop at Belsun station had turned into
a nightmare. He shuddered. He could still see Banstock lying face
up with his chest blasted away and Tariq clutching the hole in his
stomach, blood oozing between his fingers. The journey back
to Curlew had been
torture with Tariq slowing down by the minute and the enforcers on
their heels. Selwood got them out of Belsun, but only just and then
the shift drive failed.
    Huh. Some smuggling operation. Tariq and
Banstock both dead, no drugs, no money and a one-way trip to
nowhere, stuck on an alien warship with no way out.
    Ah well. Another boring night of trying to
understand the alien vids. He made an effort and smiled at Sayvu,
who smiled back.
    “I look forward to see you again tomorrow,”
he said, making that little neck bow.
    He genuinely liked the girl and he was pretty
sure she liked him. After all, they’d been together now for a
number of days.
    She walked over to Jones, catlike even in an
isolation suit. “Your friend finds this very easy.” She spoke very
softly and he had to strain to hear.
    “She finds everything very easy,” he blurted.
Shit. He shouldn’t have said that. “She is very clever. Much
cleverer than me.” He gave her a wide smile. Maybe he could make
friends with her. “But not as pretty as you.” She wasn’t bad
looking. At least as far as he could tell, with her all covered up
in an isolation suit.
    Sayvu’s lips curved. “I could give you extra
lessons.”
    “How?”
    “I can have you brought back here in an hour,
say. We can work together, you and I.”
    Work together at what? He wished she didn’t
have to wear that blasted helmet. The light reflected off the
curved surface, hiding her expression. “I would like that.” He
bowed a little deeper this time, careful not to stare.
     
    ****
     
    When Jones returned, Sayvu made the trooper
stand outside.
    “This is very kind of you,” he said when he’d
seated himself at the table.
    “I feel sorry for you. You are so much like
us.”
    He grinned. “I still will not be able to tell
you where I come from. I do not know.”
    “Yes, I understood that. So you will never be
able to go home.”
    “Probably.” Unless Selwood could work
something out.
    She hesitated, licked her lips. “Do all your
people have eyes like yours? Or just the men?”
    “Oh, everybody. Including the women. Selwood
is different. Why do you ask?”
    “Nothing. If you can’t go home, what will you
do?”
    He gazed at the tabletop, smooth and
unmarked. “Do? What do you mean?”
    “Well, from what you have said you are Vesha,
like me.”
    Vesha. Merchants, businessmen and in the
military, most often cargo masters, stores people, accountants.
People like him. “Yes.”
    “So you do not wish to be on a warship.”
    A statement. “No. Not really. What about
you?”
    “I had no choice. We all must serve for two
years. I have two months before I may leave.”
    A conscript. “So you’re not likely to end up
as a ship’s captain, then.”
    She scowled. “Only Mirka become command
officers.” She gestured behind her head. “Those with the coti .”
    “ Coti ?”
    “Mirka officers wear their hair short on top
and sides but at the back a long piece.”
    Ah yes.