Chapter 10: Hidden Talents

McGregor woke up alone, feeling tiny as he sat up in the massive bed, Zhari’s bulk conspicuously absent. The toys and bonds were still strewn about, and the dried fluids from the night before made the sheets stiff and scratchy. He wondered where she was for a moment, then he smelled food, dropping off the edge of the bed and making his way towards the kitchen.

He stepped out from behind the bedroom door, the wooden panel sliding closed behind him. Artificial sunlight from the station’s lamps was bleeding in through the blinds, the only windows in the apartment facing the torus, as the station’s hull was directly behind them and there were other apartments to their left and right. It must be late in the morning, probably close to midday.

Zhari was standing in front of the stove top, preparing something in a large skillet, the smell of cooking meat filling the room. Her furry ears swiveled to face him as she heard him enter, McGregor rubbing his eyes as he approached. She was still wearing her maid outfit, as dutiful as ever, and she had done her hair up in a bun which probably meant that she had taken a shower. He should probably do the same pretty soon, they had made a real mess of each other the night before.

“You’re making ‘me’ breakfast?” He asked, hopping up onto the one of the oversized chairs at the kitchen table to watch her. “That’s a first.”

“You usually do the cooking,” she replied, flipping whatever it was that she was frying with a spatula. “I thought that I might make some homeworld food today, since you were asleep. I assumed that you enjoyed cooking, so I never offered.”

“I know my way around a kitchen, yeah, but I won’t object if you want to help out. Don’t think I’ve ever eaten any Borealan food before, what are you making?”

“Well ... it’s not ‘really’ Borealan food, I’m just cooking human food in a Borealan style. I found these large hunks of meat in the freezer, I cut them into strips and I’m cooking them in oil.”

“You’re frying beef? Interesting...”

“It’ll be good, you’ll see.”

She seemed happy today, her tail was waving back and forth beneath her short skirt, the garment scarcely long enough to cover her shapely rear. That costume had been a good investment, just the sight of her made him consider foregoing breakfast and having a taste of her instead, but there would be ample time for that later.

She finished cooking, spooning the strips of meat onto two large plates, and bringing them over to the table. McGregor was hungry, and so he wasted no time digging in, spearing a piece of beef on his fork and taking a tentative bite. It was juicy on the inside, crispy on the outside, salty and very oily in the way that the cats preferred. They didn’t care much for sugary food and so barbecue sauce and sweet meats were lost on them. They preferred the savory variety, and they were especially sensitive to fats and oils in their meal.

It was a little greasy by human standards, but it tasted good. Some sweet sauce like barbecue or ketchup would have made it downright delicious. She noted that he was wolfing it down, and she seemed pleased, starting on her own significantly larger pile of fried beef as she sat opposite to him at the table.

“So what’s the plan for today?” She asked, her voice muffled by a mouthful of meat.

“I had some ideas. Your hands are too big to play videogames, at least until some company designs a controller aimed at Borealans, but I bet we can adjust some VR goggles to fit you.”

“What are those?”

“They’re like electronic goggles that have computer screens inside them. You wear them over your eyes and it makes you feel like you’re in another world.”

“Why?” She asked, chewing on a piece of beef as she watched him quizzically.

“Well think about it, you could use it as a combat simulator, or you could visit a representation of somewhere without having to travel there physically. In fact, I know just what to do with it.”

He took a couple of minutes to finish off his meal, and then hopped down off his chair, heading over to the living room.

“What are you doing?” Zhari asked, craning her neck to get a look at him as he crouched beneath the wall mounted screen and pushed his hands through the holographic fireplace. There was a cupboard down there that contained more electronic goodies, and he rummaged for the VR sets.

“You’ll see soon enough, by the time you’ve finished eating I should have these set up.”

She shrugged, returning to her food as McGregor retrieved two pairs of goggles, finding the remote for the screen and beginning to scroll through the option menu. He remarked once again that Zhari seemed to have little interest in human technology. Devices that should have been as magic to her were at best curiosities, and at worst completely ignored. It wasn’t what he had expected, but perhaps it was more a reflection of his environment than hers. He had grown up surrounded by toys and gadgets, his eyes always fixed on a monitor or a display, his fingers always typing at a keyboard or swiping across a touch panel.

Zhari’s upbringing had been very different, the technology level on Borealis was far lower than it was in UNN space. She had no doubt explored a wealth of natural beauty while he had been locked his bedroom playing flight simulators, and their career choices reflected that. He had become a UNN pilot, and she had become a shock trooper. A love of computers and gadgets would not help her out in the bush any more than an interest in hiking would be of use to him in a cockpit.

Still, it amused him how she seemed able to just block everything out, as if she didn’t even see the blinking lights and flashing displays that surrounded her on a daily basis.

Fortunately he had some other ideas of how to wow her.

“So I put it on my face?” Zhari asked, holding the device between her clawed fingers disdainfully.

“They’re goggles,” McGregor protested, “you what to do with them. Don’t be difficult, I’m trying to show you something cool here.”

She sighed and pulled the elastic strap around her head. It was adjustable, but clearly built with humans in mind, and she had some difficulty getting it to fit. McGregor helped her out, the larger alien leaning down so that he could make adjustments to its length, and to the distance between the two lenses. After a few minutes of struggling, they finally got the goggles to fit her, and Zhari found herself looking at two dark screens that were displaying nothing but a standby message.

“It’s not working.”

“I didn’t turn it on yet! I have to select a program to run from the main computer, and then it’ll stream a scenario to our goggles. There’s a gyroscope in the headset, so the computer will be able to track your moments, which means that you can look around organically. It’ll be like you’re really there.”

Zhari wasn’t convinced, and she stood with her arms crossed as she waited for something to happen. She could hear McGregor pressing buttons, and after a moment the two screens flared to life. Now she saw a status bar that began to slowly fill. After a few more moments, there was a sudden rush of color and movement, making her reel as her field of view was filled with scenery.

She was no longer in the apartment, with its matte white walls and its wooden furniture. Before her she saw a vast expanse of sand, reds and browns with dark outcrops of rock protruding from the earth. She might have mistaken it for a Borealan desert, but the horizon was strange, and the atmosphere looked oddly thin and hazy. The sun was a tiny point of blue light in the sky, nothing like that of her home planet, and the desertscape was pockmarked with what looked like impact craters.

She looked up, noticing a dark shadow in the distance, a wave of vertigo rocking her as she realized what she was seeing. That was not part of the sky, it was not a cloud formation, it was a mountain of such scale that her brain could scarcely process it. It rose high above the clouds, a sheer face that must have been thousands of feet tall tapering into a rough cone, its cap flat rather than the point that she had anticipated.

She lurched as she heard McGregor’s voice. He was in the room with her but she couldn’t see him, she couldn’t wrap her head around the fact that her eyes were seeing one thing while her ears were hearing another. It was disorientating.

“Olympus Mons. You’re looking at the largest volcano ever discovered. It’s twenty two kilometers high, so tall that it actually protrudes from the planet’s atmosphere.”

“Is this ... Earth?” Zhari asked, awestruck by the sight. “I imagined it differently.”

“No, close. This is Mars, one of the other planets in Sol system.”

She looked around her, scanning her feline eyes over the barren desert. It would have felt like she was really there, was it not for the sensation of hard wood beneath her feet and the scent of the apartment filling her nose. She stared for a minute longer, before McGregor’s voice once again snapped her out of her stupor.

“Shall I show you something else?”

She nodded, but then realized that he couldn’t see her through the goggles.

“Yes.”

She heard him press a button, and then there was a sudden rush of color and movement, as if some invisible hand had gripped her by the scruff of her neck and had yanked her a million miles away in the space of a second.

Now she found herself standing on ice, the horizon completely flat before her. There was no atmosphere, the stars were bright and naked, cold points of light that stood out against the velvet darkness of space. It was an ice world, frozen and inhospitable. Why bring her here?

Her question was answered as she turned to look behind her, seeing a giant ball rising into the sky. It was massive, even larger than the volcano had been, taking up her entire field of view. It hung in space, oppressive and imposing, its surface ringed by colorful bands and spots that bled into one another like running paints as they roiled. It was a gas giant, she was standing on one of its moons. She felt as if the great planet was about to fall from the heavens and crush her.

“Jupiter,” McGregor explained, “another one of the planets in our solar system. We’re standing on Europa, one of its moons. Life evolved both in Earth’s oceans, and in Europa’s. Beneath our feet is a liquid ocean about thirty miles deep that harbors all manner of exotic marine life and extremophiles. The low gravity makes them especially large, it’s not a place that you’d want to go swimming.”

Zhari looked at the ground beneath her feet, seeing ice, but feeling the wood floor of the apartment under her clawed toes. She suddenly felt nervous, imagining aquatic terrors lurking beneath her. In her mind she knew that this wasn’t real, but her eyes painted a convincing picture.

There was another rush of color and movement, dizzying her as the computer switched scenes, and a new environment materialized around her. Now she was on the shore of a gigantic lake, white sand beneath her feet and tall trees with green fronds waving in the wind behind her. The blue water was remarkably clear, and it was full of colorful fish that darted to and fro beneath the surface. It looked warm, the sun was harsh and bright, hanging high in an azure sky that was spotted with wispy clouds here and there. The lake was truly massive, extending all the way to the horizon. She couldn’t even see the far shore from where she was standing.

“Now we’re on Earth,” McGregor explained, “a Caribbean island to be exact.”

“How big is this lake?” Zhari asked, awestruck by the beauty of the landscape. She couldn’t take her eyes off the little fish, they were swimming so close to the shore, in such shallow water. They were decorated in all manner of bright colors, blues and greens and yellows. She could have reached down and plucked one from the lake with her claws, had this been real and not an illusion.

“That’s not a lake,” he replied, “that’s an ocean. It’s hundreds of miles wide.”

They didn’t have oceans back on the homeworld, only great lakes, around which Borealan civilization clustered. How many of their lakes would fit into this ocean?

“It’s salt water,” he continued, “you couldn’t drink it like you can lake water. Lots of animals live in it however.”

Her mind was playing tricks on her, she could almost feel the breeze on her face. They lingered here for a little longer, Zhari drinking in the wealth of natural beauty. It was all so striking, more like a painting than something that could really exist. The border between the white sand and the blue ocean was so crisp and harsh, as was the boundary between the ocean and the sky on the horizon. She wondered if she could kneel, finding that she could, and she steadied herself with her hands as she brought her goggles down close to the sand.

It was so fine and delicate, unlike the deserts of Borealis. There were tiny shells interspersed between the grains, in beautiful spirals and patterns, no doubt shed by tiny animals. She wanted to pick one up, examine it more closely, but as her claws grasped at nothing she remembered that none of this was real. She was still standing in the apartment, pawing at thin air.

She stood again, grateful that McGregor couldn’t see her, and after a few more moments he snapped them to another location.

Zhari was yet again faced with a completely new landscape, a mountain range that rose high into the clouds. She was standing on the tallest peak, many of the mountains beneath her disappearing into a layer of thick cloud that hung over them like a mist. At first glance it was hard to distinguish cloud from snow, but the dark smears of exposed rock gave the mountains away, protruding from the wisps of vapor like broken teeth. The sun was bright and harsh, casting sharp shadows across the jagged rock, and the sky above her seemed to taper into a deeper blue that bordered on the black of open space. They must be high indeed.

“What planet are we on now?” She asked, and McGregor chuckled in response.

“Still Earth. Do you not have mountain ranges on Borealis?”

“We do, in the North. I’ve never seen them myself.”

“This is Mount Everest, you’re standing on the peak of the tallest mountain on Earth. Below you is the Himalayan mountain range. If you were to visit this place in real life, you would need an oxygen mask to breathe. The air is so thin up here that you would suffocate and die without it.”

She noted that, as bright as the sun was, it never hurt her eyes. This scene was being output by a computer screen that could only simulate the heat and brightness of a star, she could stare directly at if she wanted to.

There was another disorientating flash of blurred colors and shapes, and once more she was thrust into a new and alien environment.

This one was distinctly artificial. She was standing in a street, the ground beneath her pathed with some kind of black, tar-like substance. There were walkways to either side of her that were bustling with humans, hundreds of them, maybe even thousands. They were wearing all manner of strange clothing, carrying bags and playing with devices as they went about their business. This was doubtless a human city, overpopulated and crowded, just as McGregor had described them.

To her left and right were what she had assumed at first glance to be canyon walls, but she now realized to be man-made structures built from glass and steel. They towered above her, such that she had to crane her neck to see the tops of their pointed spires. The constructs were of such scale that they looked as if they shouldn’t have been able to support their own weight. How could something so tall and thin stand upright without keeling over?

There were awnings at street level, colorful tarps and signs with all manner of logos and human text that she couldn’t read very well. There were flashing lights too, colorful displays that were mounted on the faces of the massive structures, it was mesmerizing. It was as much a bazaar as a street, with vendors towing carts accosting the pedestrians, selling them food and strange items of alien clothing. She thanked her stars that she couldn’t hear it, the din would have been deafening to her sensitive ears.

She noticed that many of the humans were entering and exiting doors at the bases of the giant towers, which meant that they must be hollow inside. They were buildings, human dwellings, and the glass that she could see was made up of innumerable windows. Did they live inside these things, like insects in a hive? How could one tolerate living in such close proximity to so many other individuals?

It was giving her vertigo, making her feel claustrophobic and anxious. So many people, such large buildings, how could the aliens live under such conditions?

“Let’s move on,” she said, the tone of her voice betraying more of her uneasiness than she would have liked.

“Don’t like cities?”

“It’s ... a bit too much. We don’t have tall buildings like this back home, the gravity is too high. Our cities are flat compared to this, made up of short, stone buildings.”

He hit another button, and they were whisked away, the ground falling out from under her as she closed her eyes and reminded herself that none of this was really happening. The dizziness and the vertigo certainly felt real, but she wasn’t really tumbling through a technicolor void, she was standing in the apartment beside McGregor as he operated the computer.

To her relief they appeared in a peaceful meadow. There was a sea of green grass leading up to a forest in the distance, colorful flowers growing in clumps everywhere that she looked. There were mountains on the horizon, tapering into rolling hills, a blue sky littered with streaks of white cloud above her head. It was picturesque, fertile, and she watched as a colorful insect fluttered by her as it hopped from flower to flower.

“Still Earth?”

“Yeah,” McGregor replied. “It’s a wonky planet, lots of different biomes, varied seasons. When we set out into space, we expected every planet to be as diverse as ours. What we found was quite the opposite. Desert planets, forest planets, ice planets. The galaxy seems to be dominated by planets that have a single biome with little variation in conditions.”

Zhari’s attention was drawn to movement in the distance, and she watched as a lanky, four-legged animal emerged from between the gnarled trunks of the trees. It was covered in brown, downy fur, and two decorative antlers protruded from its skull. It seemed timid, its ears flicking as it examined her, inching closer across the meadow on its dainty hooves.

It drew nearer and nearer, Zhari holding her breath so at not to startle the skittish creature, losing herself in the illusion for a moment and forgetting that it couldn’t really see her. She reached out a hand towards its snout, intending to let the creature sniff her, but the movement was not reflected in her field of vision. The creature blinked its long lashes at her, and then scurried away, bounding gracefully across the grass before vanishing back into the darkness of the forest.

“What was that?” She asked, resisting the impulse to chase the creature.

“A stag. It’s a herbivore, they live in herds.”

“I think I’d like to hunt one, can you eat them?”

“Yes, their meat is called ‘venison’. Maybe we should take our next shore leave on Earth, and you can bag yourself a nice big buck.”

“I’d like that,” she replied.

McGregor watched as Zhari removed the goggles, blinking as her amber eyes adjusted the light.

“What did you think?” He asked as she straightened her hair where the band had ruffled it, combing the orange strands with her claws.

“It’s more interesting than most of your other toys.”

She was obviously downplaying how much it had impressed her, but it was as much of a compliment as he expected to get from her. The deer had been a nice touch, it was a shame that the goggles didn’t come with gloves or she could have interacted with it.

“Alright then, what do Borealans do for fun?”

She gave him a quizzical look, one of her orange eyebrows raised.

“Hunting, fishing, sparring. Things like that.”

“Come on, you must have more culture than that. You told me that your people make tapestries, you brew wines, you must have masons and carpenters.”

“Well of course, but those are jobs.”

“So you’re telling me that Borealans don’t see cultural pursuits as worthy of their time?”

“That’s ... not what I meant,” she replied. “I’m a soldier, I don’t weave tapestries or carve reliefs, I don’t play music. I train in order to keep my skills sharp, because that is what is required of me.”

“Surely that can’t be your whole life? There must be something creative or recreational that you enjoy doing.” His tone became more serious suddenly, McGregor imitating what he imagined a stern Alpha to sound like, and her demeanor changed immediately. “Zhari, I hope you’re not lying to your Alpha, that would make me very upset.”

She cowered, and he had to stifle a laugh, struggling to maintain his serious expression.

“Well ... there is ‘one’ thing...”

“What’s the holdup? Out with it!”

“Y-You’ll laugh at me.”

“I promise that I won’t laugh at you, even if you’re into crochet.”

She was really dancing around the issue, just what the hell was she holding back? She looked like a nervous little girl who was about to go out on stage at a school play.

“Well ... you know of our long rifles, yes?”

“The large bore powder rifles that you guys use? Yeah I’ve seen them before.”

The Borealans had a fairly low level of technology compared to the UNN, and before humans had made first contact with the planet, gunpowder rifles had been their favored brand of weapon. They were extremely long and too large for a human to lift, usually made from wood and stamped metal. Despite the weapons being made obsolete by railgun and plasma alternatives, they were still used back on the homeworld in a traditional and ceremonial capacity, usually for hunting. The aliens liked to replicate the design when they assembled their XMRs once they arrived on the station, modular rifles with components that could be swapped out on the fly in order to accommodate all manner of aliens and battlefield roles. The Borealan shock troopers chose the largest barrels that were available, as long as a man was tall and lined with magnetic coils, commonly tipped with a wicked bayonet that could be used as a spear in close quarters.

“Have you ever seen one up close?”

“I’ve seen pictures,” he replied, curious as to where she was going with this. “They’re carved from wood, they have stamped metal parts, they’re usually pretty elaborately decorated with engravings and embellishments.”

“I ... like to decorate them,” she announced, as if it was some shameful confession. “I like to carve reliefs into the wood with my claws, and I like damascening.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s when you inlay different metals onto one another to make a pattern or a picture. I usually use silver and gold, sometimes gemstones. I decorate the rifles with hunting scenes, battle scenes, maybe patterns that I think look good.”

“So you’re like ... some kind of artisan? Why on earth would you be ashamed of something like that?”

She seemed taken aback by his positive response, growing more confident as she elaborated.

“Well ... it’s not considered suitable work for an Alpha. The leader of a pack shouldn’t be doing menial tasks, they should order a subordinate to do it in their place. But I enjoy it. It’s intricate, and complex. I can occupy myself for a whole afternoon just scarring the metal and hammering in the patterns. I can forget about all of my worries for a while.”

“So why is that looked down upon? Don’t Borealans want their weapons decorated?”

“They do, yes, but that task is usually reserved for a professional. It is ... unorthodox for a soldier to take an interest in art, rather than dedicating all of their time to training.”

“Aren’t you all soldiers?”

“Not professional soldiers, no. Our society still needs butchers, masons, doctors. Every Borealan can fight, but that’s just ... what we are.”

“So the other Borealans didn’t like you decorating weapons?”

“As an Alpha, everything that you do matters. Every gesture and glance can assert dominance, or expose weakness. If you engage in an activity that might be seen as beneath you, or reserved for the lower echelons of society, then people will see that as a vulnerability to be exploited. I did it mostly in private for those reasons.”

He could see it in his mind’s eye, Zhari barking orders and intimidating her subordinates one minute, then hiding away in some secluded workshop while she worked on her art in secret the next. It was endearing, tragic in a way. She had a talent, an art form that she was passionate about. Yet ironically, her elevated status in the social system in which she lived forced her to suppress that facet of her personality.

It perfectly aligned with what he knew about her behavior. Zhari was a square peg that had been forced through a round hole, a sensitive artist on the inside, but forced to project a facade of toughness and aggression on the outside. Her pride would not let her accept a lower position in her pack, she was compelled to be at the top of the hierarchy, and yet her personality was so unsuited to that role. The constant stress of maintaining her position kept her on edge, she didn’t want that responsibility, it wasn’t a lifestyle that suited her. Yet she had no alternatives, at least not until she had met McGregor...

When she was with him she could let her guard down, relax. He was her Alpha, but far from being a domineering beast who would swipe her with his claws for every minor infraction, she could be his subordinate without surrendering her pride. She could still be the biggest and the strongest, the proud Borealan warrior, but in his company she could put a temporary hold on the tension and posturing.

Another one of her walls had been torn down, and he wasn’t about to let her retreat into her shell again.

“Show me,” he commanded, and her tail twitched nervously.

“What do you mean?”

“Let’s find something for you to carve, and you can show me how you do it.”

Before she could mount a protest, he set off into the apartment in search of something that she could carve, leaving her to put the VR goggles away. A bar of soap maybe? No, it should be wooden, in case he wanted to keep it when she was done. He searched around the kitchen for a minute as she watched him across the open plan apartment, and then he found something suitable. There was a wooden bowl on one of the counter tops, designed to hold salads and snacks no doubt. It was fairly large, with a lot of surface area, the wood looked soft enough for carving.

He brought it over to her and raised it above his head so that she could see it.

“Will this work?”

“Yes...”

She took it from his hands, examining it for a moment as she turned it over.

“Do you need to sit at the table?”

She shook her head, her feline eyes still fixed on the bowl.

“No, I can do it on the couch.”

She sat down heavily, the frame creaking under her weight, McGregor hovering nearby. She hadn’t started carving yet, she was just look over the bowl, no doubt planning what she was going to carve and how she would go about it.

“Do you need a knife or anything?”

“I’d need a stamp for damascening, but I can carve wood with my claws.”

“Like finger painting,” he commented. As he watched her, her face began to redden, almost as if she was embarrassed to be seen.

“I’ve ... never done it with anyone watching before,” she stammered. He was still amazed by her shyness, it was so jarring coming from a creature that was eight feet tall and weighed as much as a Bengal tiger. In one moment she acted like a ferocious drill instructor, and in the next she behaved like a quiet schoolgirl.

“Well you’ll have to get used to it, because I want to watch,” he said as he clambered up onto the oversized couch beside her. She hesitated for a moment longer, then she extended her furry index finger and brought her claw down towards the bowl. Her talons were wickedly sharp, as black as onyx and curved like meat hooks. A swipe from one of her hands would have cleaved flesh from bone, probably taken his head clean off his shoulders, but she was using that killing implement with such care and dexterity now. Their big hands and fat fingers made them look clumsy compared to a human, but that wasn’t the case at all.

Her claw sank easily into the soft wood, and as he watched, she began to carve. She cut furrows in the bowl, drawing lines and patterns, blowing away the excess dust every so often as she worked. McGregor had seen humans whittle to create little carvings and sculptures, but this was entirely different. Rather than using a knife or a tool to cut away the unwanted wood, their fingers themselves were knives. He wouldn’t have been surprised if this practice dated back to the earliest days of their species’ evolution, it seemed like something that came naturally to them.