Trapped with the Alien Transporter (Ragrim Explorations #1)

Chapter 10

Ophelia hated everything. Hsinth was no kind of mind-reader, but he could tell that her answers were getting shorter and shorter, and her shoulders—wide for a human woman—were creeping up towards her ears. He wanted to push them down and then force his thumbs into her stiff muscles to work out the stress, but he knew she wouldn’t appreciate any kind of touch right now.

Every time something unexpected happened, she jumped higher than she should have, and every time he got close, her hackles raised and her voice got just the tiniest bit shriller. It wasn’t that he was trying too get close, but in the close confines of his bedroom, bumps were bound to happen. And with all the cloth they were hanging along the walls, it was getting smaller all the time.

Along with the fire rocks, Ophelia had brought in armfuls of cloth he’d purchased on a dozen different worlds. The smells bothered his nose, but he couldn’t be a choosy beggar at this point. Coarse sand-cloth from Lethsh, soft scale polishing cloth from Geshal that was meant to be cut into small squares for sale or use, a few rugs of unknown origin with geometric patterns that Ophelia had exclaimed over, among others. They all went up on the walls, ceiling, and floor in layers, meant to trap heat and keep the creeping cold from the outside confined in the outer sections.

Despite the room growing infinitesimally warmer with each layer they put up in rings, he could tell her mood was growing worse.

“Did you want more of the spray?” he offered. “I have a very large box of it.”

“No,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Are you hungry?” he asked. The thought made him frown. He knew he’d eaten at several points, even if it could just be called snacking, but in the day and a half that they’d been stuck here, he couldn’t remember Ophelia ever taking time for a meal.

“No,” she said again.

He finished applying magnetic tape to the top of the Madriim water-tapestry he’d been holding and turned to face her. “I don’t think I’ve seen you eat since you got on the ship,” he said.

Her eyes dropped from where she’d looked up at him. “I ate,” she replied. “I think.”

“What did you eat?” he asked.

Ophelia’s voice was vague. “I don’t know. Something. I know I made time for it.”

He remembered her trundling out into the galley while he’d been sorting through boxes for cloth. It had been some time after she’d used the spray, but he hadn’t kept eyes on her.

“Ophelia,” he said gently. “Why don’t we take a break? I know I could use some food, and you probably could too.”

“I’m good,” she said. “I’ll eat later, I promise.”

“I don’t think you are,” Hsinth said. He came up behind her and carefully took the pile of thinner shawls she’d laid over one arm. With the other one occupied with heavy magnets, she couldn’t stop him. “Come on, let’s get something to eat.”

“I said I’m good,” she snapped. One hand reached out to snatch the shawls back. “Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

He kept his hand over them with just enough strength to keep them here. “Because I’m worried about you,” he said. “I know we’re both under a lot of stress right now, but you really don’t seem like you’re okay.”

“I’m fine,” she said. Her voice was high and tight, and her head was starting to twitch back and forth atop her neck as she craned this way and that, listening for something he couldn’t hear.

“Ophelia,” he tried again. “Please. I have soup, I have tea. You need to eat and drink something and I—”

“Stop it!” she shrieked. “I told you I’m fine, why can’t you just let everything be fine? I don’t need you to baby me, I don’t need to be told what to do, I just need to fix this and get this done. I just need to fix– to fix– to fix—”

She tripped over the words to repeat herself until her voice petered out, arms craned in and bent awkwardly at the wrists. Her eyes were fixed upon him balefully as her nose screwed up.

“Leave me ‘lone,” she whispered.

Hsinth was speechless. “Who did this to you?” he asked, thinking of all the things he would like to do to the person who had made headstrong, bright Ophelia turn into a stuttering, small thing in only a few breaths.

Her eyes squeezed shut, and as he watched, her breathing slowed and she unclenched her arms and shoulders only to slide stiffly to the floor.

It was padded by cloth now, less cold than it had been. Still, Hsinth longed to get her somewhere softer.

“Ophelia,” he asked quietly. “Can I move you to the bed?”

She nodded jerkily, and he slid his hands beneath her, picking her up.

“Too heavy,” she grunted. “Hsinth.”

“In no universe are you too heavy,” he said. Thinking about where his hands were touching would do neither of them any good.

“Crush you,” she said. Her eyes were wide and panicked, and her cheeks were flushed red beneath them.

“You won’t,” he said. “You could never crush me.”

“Ugh,” she said then, and nothing else.

Hsinth set her carefully on the bed, wrapping the shawls around her shoulders. They would do there for now. He pinned them in place with a pair of the magnets, and Ophelia seemed to relax under the pressure.

“Talk to me,” he said quietly. “Can you talk?”

She shook her head, and he closed his eyes in frustration and a little rage. When the ship was fixed, he was going to take it back to Earth as fast as he could and absolutely destroy whoever had made her like this.

Ophelia moved onto her side slowly, gingerly, like an old woman.

Unsure what to do, Hsinth could only hover, draping her in one of the blankets he’d planned to tack on the wall before he joined her under it for added warmth. Pulled up over their heads, it made a little tent that smelled faintly like Tremallin spices and some other undefinable scent he couldn’t quite describe.

The light tinted orange as it filtered through the fabric and he stared at Ophelia, a little fascinated at how the color change on her skin reminded him of a Geshallan female signaling a Geshallan male. It was something he’d never seen, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know about it.

And now Ophelia was awash with that same hue.

“You asked who did this to me,” she said hoarsely, a few minutes later.

Hsinth couldn’t help the way he tensed, and he felt Ophelia do the same.

“It’s not like that,” she said. “That’s just– it’s me. It’s just the way I am. No one did that to me.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, reaching out to tilt her chin.

She met his eyes defiantly, though he could see the exhaustion in her gaze. The shame.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m– my brain doesn’t work like most other humans. I don’t remember all the technical terms and what exactly changes. I think it’s different for all of us. I’m what’s called autistic on Earth, and though I mask really well, sometimes things get to be too much and I just… I do what I did just now. I’m sorry.”

“Does that happen a lot?”

She closed her eyes, which told him everything he needed to know. It happened enough.

“I apologize,” she said woodenly. “I got overwhelmed and I got mean and it won’t happen again.”

Hsinth reached out and gathered her to him, pulling the little human into his chest. “It’s fine,” he said. “Tell me how I can help make this easier for you.”

She tensed in his arms, turning into a hard little rod. “You can’t do anything,” she said. “I’m not something to fix.”

“I’m not asking if I can fix you,” he said mildly. “What I do want to know is if there’s something I’m doing or something here that’s being more of an issue than I realize. Is there a color you hate? Is it the lighting?”

Ophelia laughed. It was a little gasping wheeze that barely did more than ruffle the blanket over them, but it was still an improvement.

“The noise,” she said finally. “There’s a– a thumping. No, a humming . It’s so deep that it gets inside my bones and my chest and I just want to rip all my organs out so they stop vibrating inside me with it.”

That’s a little far , he thought, and then he started listening. “Are you talking about the compressors? The grav-pads? The– oh.”

It was simple. If he really , really focused, he could hear and feel the faintest buzz coming from the ship around them, but it wasn’t something he noticed even on the days when he was alone on the ship.

Ophelia, on the other hand, did.

He examined her red-rimmed eyes and the faint bags beneath them, the downturned corners of her mouth and the lank hair. All signs of exhaustion and stress that he’d missed in the time he’d been confined with her.

Guilt rose over him in a wave.

“I need to fix this,” he muttered aloud. “Please excuse me.”

He pulled himself out of the bed and headed straight for the drives. Turning off the hypermatter engine wouldn’t do anything to the rest of the ship or affect the heat that the sunspore drive was still emitting, but it should fix whatever noise Ophelia was hearing. He wasn’t used to hearing such low frequencies. It was another thing to chalk up to human oddities, but now that he knew about it, he’d have to be aware of it for future passengers.

Back in the bedroom, he found Ophelia curled into a ball on the bed, rubbing at her upper arms with a small smile on her face. The smile, however, belied the tears.

“Easy,” he said, slipping back into the bed. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she gasped as silent tears slipped down her face to leave dark spots on the sheets. “It’s so quiet now.”

He could have said that it was quiet before, that he hadn’t heard anything, and that she was too sensitive. He could have said all of those things and reminded her that she was different, however the humans saw it. Instead he just gathered her close again, surprised at the way she didn’t resist him.

Several things were dropping into place. That was why she had the drugs in her bag. That was why she was going somewhere less busy than Earth.

For all he’d studied communication with humans, this was one he hadn’t known anything about and hadn’t thought to ask about.

“I’m sorry I’m weird,” she mumbled. Her back was against his front now, and his hands were around her waist.

“You’re not weird,” Hsinth said into her hair.

“Yes I am,” she said. “Most other humans think I’m weird. Even my mom did, before I left home. And I know you think I’m weird now, if you didn’t before.”

“I didn’t think you were weird before, and I don’t think you’re weird now,” Hsinth said. He couldn’t keep the fierceness from his voice. “The Republic is made up of a half-dozen different species. We’re going to be unusual to each other. That doesn’t mean anyone is weird.”

“But I am weird,” she said. Now that she was talking, it was as though Hsinth had worked some kind of stopper out of her. “I’ve spent my whole life embracing my weirdness while apologizing for being wired differently, and it’s why I moved and why I’ve been trying to stick to a schedule on the ship even though we haven’t been here long enough to establish one, and why I need to make sure that when we get to Ysenys I can settle in properly without doing anything to establish myself as ‘the new lady who’s a total weirdo’ and—”

Hsinth squeezed her tight, and she let out a muffled squeak. “Okay, so you’re weird,” he said. “So what?”

“Thank you,” Ophelia mumbled. “I am weird, I just didn’t want to be a panicking asshole here when we don’t need one of those around. I just want to hang stuff.”

“I think it’s fine for now,” he said. “The fire rocks are giving off heat, and we’re okay for now, progress-wise. We can take a break.”

“And maybe get some food?” Ophelia asked in a small voice. “I was ignoring it before, but now that you put the idea in my head, I am really hungry.”

Hsinth smiled. “Okay.”

While he was sorting through the food boxes, which she’d helpfully put in one section of the galley, he looked over at where Ophelia was picking through his carefully selected human foods.

“Pizza,” she whispered in quiet delight. She pulled out a small, flat box, then a second.

He remembered selecting them because they were popular among humans as a reclaimed food from before the planet had gone into such disrepair, but he hadn’t ever tried one himself.

Ophelia unwrapped both and put them in the oven before turning to him. “What are you going to eat?”

Hsinth held up a noodle bowl. “Couple of these. High carbs, high protein. Best thing to eat in the cold.”

She looked at the oven and a small smirk crossed her lips. “Pizza’s definitely that.”

“I owe you an apology,” he said, wanting to do whatever he could to keep that smile on her face.

“Oh?” she asked, turning to him. She was snuggled up as close as she could get to the oven without burning herself, and he came over to join her in basking.

The noodle bowls had their own auto-heater built in, but he still put them on top of the mini-oven to soak in whatever excess they could get. Adding the water activated the heating element. It was another thing to consider if the ship got any colder; he didn’t want to waste food, but eating the hot noodle bowls would be an extra source of warmth, however small.

“About the colony,” he said. “I had a good amount of time to think when I was trapped in that cave and I realized that blaming them wasn’t going to solve anything, and if we treated them for things their parents did, it might just keep the cycle going.”

“That’s what I was trying to tell you,” Ophelia said. “That’s what happened with Germany—one of our countries—who started the Second World War. It led to a lot of angry people and made a huge gateway for a dictator to rise because of resentments over the punishment after the Treaty of… the name doesn’t matter. Look, Lukrim was punished after the war, but the queen has done everything she can to temper any issues that have come up. I don’t think we’ll have any long-term fallout because of it, but in my opinion, they’ve been punished enough. I’m not looking for Lukrim-versus-Earth version two-point-oh.”

Hsinth nodded, though he had no idea what Germany was, or the treaty she’d mentioned.

But it was definitely nice to have a conversation about Lukrimians that hadn’t devolved into shouting yet.

“I probably should have listened the first time we got into it,” he said ruefully. “I’m not sure why I was so affronted about it before.”

Ophelia shrugged. “It’s a divisive topic, even on Earth. I’ve heard people say that the rest of the galaxy should have just glassed Lukrim and been done with it.”

Hsinth frowned. “That’s a little too far.”

“Even for you,” Ophelia snorted.

“Even for me,” he agreed before lapsing into silence.

The oven dinged and she pulled her pizzas out of the narrow space. Hsinth practically basked in the heat coming out, and they left the door open to enjoy the rolling warmth. He watched in fascination while Ophelia picked pieces of some kind of flat meat off the top of her pizzas and popped them gingerly into her mouth.

“Why didn’t you tell me about your differences earlier?” he asked, picking up his cup of noodles. It was almost hot enough to burn his hands, but he couldn’t make himself care. “If I’d known, I could have changed a few things for you, made it easier.”

Ophelia scowled. “Because I don’t want to make people change things for me. Whenever I tell someone about it, that’s all they see. They don’t see me, they don’t see the math I can do or any of my hobbies. They just see what makes me different.”

“I get that,” he said.

She gave him a long look. “Do you?”

Hsinth could feel the skin around his eyes darken.

“Does that mean something?” Ophelia asked, pointing at his eyes with a greasy finger. “The eyeliner thing?”

“It’s not makeup,” he said quickly.

Ophelia rolled her eyes. “Obviously. What is it?”

“Like a blush,” he said. “What makes me different is not exactly something I tell people about because it’s none of their business.”

“What is it?” she asked, and then she clapped her free hand over her mouth. “Sorry, sorry, we just went over this. If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to.”

“It’s fine,” Hsinth said.

This was a human thing, wasn’t it? Sharing intimacies? Humans must just do it faster than other species. Or perhaps that was just an Ophelia thing.

“About being different,” he said. “Maybe I was just over the top about defending humans because I would never do that. Use someone for sex, I mean. I’ve never even visited a pleasure-house because I didn’t want to interact with someone just for the act of sex in order to get it out of the way.”

Her eyes widened. “You mean– oh. You’re a—”

“Yes,” Hsinth said. He knew his melanophores had to be almost pure black by now. “When it comes out, I get judged for it. I have not yet met a female that I cared for enough to experience that with, so I remain sthithiss .”

“Is that Geshallan for a virgin?” she asked.

Hsinth felt the breath whoosh out of his mouth in an explosive laugh. “Yes, since you need things spelled out. To be more direct, it means untied or unswollen.”

“Unswollen,” Ophelia said, and her eyes dropped to his pants. “Is that uh—”

“Ophelia,” he said. “I am not getting into the intricacies of Geshallan genitalia right now. Let’s finish eating, and then maybe we can discuss it later.”

He finished the rest of his noodle bowl and picked up the second. Calories were good. Calories created heat. And the more heat he could make on his own, the less he might end up embarrassingly wrapped around Ophelia in the morning as an established virgin, as she put it.

At least now they both knew each other’s vulnerabilities. He could only hope it wouldn’t come back and bite him in the ass.