* * * *
At the end of the night the three of them were very glad it was over. They were just about to leave when Tseb2864 came into the kitchen.
“ You have all given me twelve hours but I still require ten credits to square up the bill.”
“ I will go and get you the rest of the money.” Said Flip. “ I will bring it to you in half an hour.”
“ I still do not trust you so I will send someone with you and she can bring the money back here.” He called the small girl over to where they were standing.
“ Ynnej648622 you go with this Other Worlder and make sure you bring the money back by the time we open today. Do not trust him, treat him like you would an odd.”
She looked very serious. “ Yes Sir, you can count on me, but you have to ask me nicely.”
The man ignored the girl’s remark and then handed Flip the communication devices back.
Flip turned to Scout and Tiny. “ What do you want to do, do you to want beam back up to the ship?”
“ What do you think?” Tiny wasn’t impressed. “ We are both exhausted after working all night. Besides we have no money, remember. We are going back to the ship to get some sleep.”
Before long the four of them beamed aboard the DVD. They stepped off the transporter pad and into the hallway.
The young girl stared around her in awe as she stepped off the transporter.
“ I’ll take Ynnej648622 with me and give her the money,” said Flip.
“ You two better head off to bed.”
Scout regarded him suspiciously. “ Do you mean she is going back to your quarters with you?”
“ I have to take her there to give her the money.”
“ I may tag along to be a chaperone.” There was a definite hostile note in her voice.
“ That won’t necessary I assure you. This whole exercise will take about five minutes and then we can put this horrible ordeal behind us.”
“ Are you sure that’s all the time it will take?” she asked distrustfully.
“ You can take my word for it. Besides I do have a room mate, remember.”
“ We'd better let someone know in the morning about what happened,” Tiny suggested.
“ Good idea,” Scout agreed. “ We can't let this happen to anyone else and beside I question if they had the authority to keep us back like that and threaten us the way that they did.”
Scout and Tiny walked wearily back in the direction of their quarters. Flip turned to the girl.
“ You come with me Ynnej..”
She cut him off. “ Just call me 22, it will be much easier.”
They took the turbo lift down a few floors and they walked to his room. “ Do you really have a room mate?” she inquired.
“ Yes but he won’t be there. According to the duty roster he started work an hour ago. Unless they changed it since yesterday.”
He opened the door to his quarters and they stepped inside.
“ On lights! Full power!” he said and he walked towards his bedroom.
“ My pants are here I think. I’ll have your money in a moment.”
“ Please do not trouble yourself to hurry.” She said. “ I’m fascinated with your quarters. I’ve never been in a single man's dwelling before.”
“ It's no trouble at all 22, as soon as I find those pants you can leave.”
“ Are you worried your female will be angry if I stay too long?” she smiled.
“ She’s not my female, she’s just a friend. That’s all.”
“ What’s his name?” she inquired.
Flip walked out of his room. “ Whose name?”
“ Your room mate's name?” she giggled.
“ Oh, his name is Lucas, he is also from Earth.” She was looking very cute he thought, for an alien as she peered curiously around the living quarters. He supposed that she had probably never been aboard a space vessel before and well, the DVD was no ordinary space vessel so she was right to be impressed.
“ Did you find them yet?”
“ No. I can’t seem to find them anywhere.” With her in the room he was feeling a little nervous. He looked under the bed, in the wardrobe. He couldn’t imagine what had happened to them.
As he walked out of the bedroom he found to his sudden shock that she was taking her clothes off.
“ What are you doing?” he stammered, stunned.
“ It is a custom with my people to bathe when we enter someone’s house. May I have a drying cloth please?” She asked it so casually that for a moment he wondered if he were dreaming.
Flip gaped. “ You can't do that... Do you have to observe this custom today? I mean, right NOW?”
“ Yes I must bathe. A drying cloth please.” She repeated.
In a sudden panic he quickly fetched her a towel, averting his eyes from her nakedness. It was the only way he could think of to get her covered up as fast as possible. But she simply took it from him and walked into the bathroom, half closing the door. “ Would you like to join me?” she giggled. “ You smell like you could use a shower.”
He heard the door of the shower close as she stepped in and then the sound of water running.
“ No, I don’t think so.” He was very nervous now and what was more he could feel himself blushing. Not just because she had no clothes on but because she had, in effect, called him smelly.
He began searching again but still couldn’t find the pants. He thought if he could only find them, she could leave all that much sooner. This had to be one of the most bizarre situations he had ever found himself in. Alien females were definitely outside of his experience.
This was a dilemma he just hadn't foreseen. What was he going to do if he couldn't get her out of there? What kind of person had to bathe on entering someone's home? How weird a custom was that? Was it some kind of a trick? Her father must have foreseen this... did this mean he was being set up for something else now?
Just then he spotted the pants on a chair in the bathroom. He walked towards the door, averting his eyes and she saw him. “ I thought you would be curious to see my alien form. Did you change your mind? There is plenty of room in here for both of us.”
“ No, no, that's fine... I'm good. I will have a shower later, I just want to get those pants.” He kept his eyes firmly turned away.
She laughed as she opened the door of the shower and grabbed them. “ Come and get them.” With a mischievous smile she laughed and turned back into the shower with them.
“ Hey! Why did you do that?” he was horrified. She giggled again.
He backed out of the room. What now? He panicked, there must be a way to get her out.
Just then the door beeped. He stared at it. Oh no! Since it wasn't locked, in the next second it slid open and Scout was standing in the entrance.
She did not look happy.
“ Is she gone yet?”
Flip swallowed hard trying not to look as uncomfortable as he felt.
“ Not yet, but it won’t be long.” He was praying that the girl would walk out of there, dressed and not mention the shower. He was so embarrassed he didn't know what to do.
Scout walked in looking about. “ Where is she then?”
Flip's eyes closed and he took a deep breath. Oh well, it was now or never. Just keep it casual, he thought and hopefully she wouldn't react badly.
“ She’s in the shower. It’s a custom with her people to bathe upon entering someone else's home... that's what, er, she said.”
Scout was appalled. “ A custom to take a shower in a strange man’s quarters?” Her eyes shot to the bathroom as her mouth dropped open.
Just then 22 called out. “ If you want your pants you’d better come and get them!”
Flip froze. No, it couldn't really get any worse than this.
Scout looked very upset. She took a deep breath, her chest rose and fell and she glared at him: “ You stink Flip!” she yelled, then stalked furiously out of his quarters.
Flip felt li
ke a fool as the door swished closed behind her. They weren't going steady or even dating so he had no idea why he should be feeling guilty anyway. He hadn't done anything wrong! But no doubt about it, the situation was proving to be most awkward.
By this time 22 came walking out of the bathroom with a large towel around her.
“ Was that your female? Did she not wish to stay and observe the custom of welcome? She is not very talkative. She did not stay to greet me.” She did not appear to think anything was out of the ordinary and there was true puzzlement in her eyes.
Flip was feeling a little angry now. He stormed into the bathroom and grabbed the wet pants. The credits were soggy but still all right. He counted out ten and handed them to her. “ Here is your money, you can go now.”
“ I’m not dressed,” she pointed out logically, “ I cannot walk out of here with a drying cloth around me. Also, we have not finished observing the custom...”
Flip sighed, “ Look 22 it's not MY custom, it's yours. In our culture we don't walk around like that and we don't go into each others homes to bathe...”
Her brows rose. “ You do not?”
He paused. “ No. In fact you shouldn't be here.”
“ But I was instructed to accompany you and take back the money,” she pointed out.
“ Yes, I know. Perhaps you can dress and do that little thing?”
She walked back into the bathroom. “ Do you have something I can brush my hair with?”
He walked in and found a comb and handed it to her. As he held it towards her she caught his hand and dragged herself towards him, kissing him on the lips.
At first he resisted, he was stunned...but suddenly he found himself enjoying it and before long he didn’t want it to end. Her lips were so soft and yes it was a bit of thrill to have an alien girl enthusiastically kissing him. Finally when he pulled away from her he felt a little lightheaded.
“ That was very nice. I wondered if it would be the same.” She smiled. “ Would you like to kiss me again?”
He looked into her cute eyes and started to lean towards her to kiss her but then remembered all the events of that very long day. “ We shouldn’t do it again, we should be strong.”
“ But I don’t want to be strong, I want to be weak.” She leaned forwards again and kissed him once again.”
Flip seemed to lose himself again like he had done the first time and they lingered for quite awhile, holding each other as they explored this wonderful sensation. When it was over he once again felt lightheaded. It was worse than the first time and now he had to sit down to recover. He noticed the clock on the wall and it was almost an hour later. Surely they hadn’t been kissing this long.
“ Look 22, you have to go back. You had better put your clothes on now and beam back to your planet. I intend to get some sleep.”
“ You should not do that I am thinking.”
“ Why not? I’m very tired.”
“ I want you to come back to the planet with me. I want to introduce you to my male partner.”
Flip couldn’t believe his ears. “ Your male partner! Why would you be fooling around with me if you have a husband?”
“ What is a husband?”
“ You know, a mate, a partner.”
“ Oh a life partner. No we are not bonded. He is only my male partner.”
“ Oh. A boyfriend?”
“ What is a boyfriend?”
“ A male you are going out with.”
“ Going out with? That is a very quaint term but it makes sense. What is a female called if she is not a life partner?”
“ A girlfriend.”
“ May I be your girlfriend?”
“ No, no. You already have a boyfriend. You can't have two.”
“ I cannot? How strange. If I am not life bonded with a male why cannot I have more than one boyfriend?”
“ It is just not done that way... at least, it shouldn't be.”
“ Your culture is very strange. May we kiss once more?”
“ But why would you want to? What about your boyfriend?”
“ You are amusing and I like kissing you. Also with you I feel free. He is much more serious than you are. He would not care if you kissed me, customs are different on my planet. As long as we are not life bonded we can keep company with many others. I can tell things are different on your world. Are you concerned your female will be angry with you for kissing me? Is she your girlfriend?”
“ I told you before she is just a friend, we are not a couple.”
“ Perhaps you don’t know that she is your girlfriend. I knew the first time I saw her. She is very angry with you now. Enough that you may have to present her with a gift of appeasement.”
“ She is angry yes but I have never asked her to be my girlfriend. If she is angry though, it will be hard on our friendship. So how do you suggest that I go about doing this gift thing?”
“ My boyfriend will give you some medicine you can give to her and she will be like clay in your hands after that.”
“ Medicine? It will make her...”
“ More amenable to you, yes. She will forgive you swiftly and will desire to do so. Then when the medicine wears off she will not remember her anger towards you.”
Flip paused for a moment. “ I don’t know that I would do such a thing. It doesn't seem quite honest. If she can't forgive me naturally it won't mean as much. But it's a moot point because I don’t think I even want a girlfriend at this point of my life.”
22 gave him a very sweet smile. “ Most certainly you do. Kiss me again and I shall prove it to you.”
As he looked into her eyes he realised they had a somewhat hypnotic effect on him.
“ No. No, you had better save your kisses for this boyfriend of yours. Besides I was dizzy from kissing you both times.”
“ Will you come and meet him? You may be surprised when you see who he is. Besides it is not safe for a girl my age to walk around with credits,” she added ingeniously.
Flip laughed. “ I have a feeling you can take care of yourself and I wouldn’t be surprised if your boyfriend doesn’t trust you at all.”
She just laughed, then went into the bathroom to dress.
“ You will escort me?”
Flip sighed. “ Yes. Okay, I will. But no funny business...”
“ Funny business? What is that?” she called from behind the door.
“ Never mind. It takes too long to explain.”
“ I am ready.”
She stepped out and held out her hand. He automatically took it and as he led her out of his quarters he muttered half under his breath:
“ That's more than I am.”
22 said nothing at hearing this. She just smiled. Ten minutes later they both beamed down to the planet.
After they materialized Flip felt the lightheaded feeling coming back as he swayed on his feet.
“ Are you alright? She asked, holding onto his arm. She was studying him intently.
“ Ever since I kissed you I have been feeling not quite right.” He mumbled. “ It's really strange... Also more time passed than I thought it had. How long were we kissing anyway?”
She smiled at him very sweetly. “ I never kiss and tell.”
“ What happened to me? Why do I feel so strange now?”
“ You will be alright,” she assured him, “ It is sometimes a natural reaction. Making love to a Tarragon woman can take away your strength.”
“ I only kissed you... Why would kissing make me so dizzy?” She put her finger over his lips to stop him speaking.
“ You ask too many questions. Now walk with me and make sure I am safe. Tarragon women do not normally carry credits.”
Flip was too lightheaded and confused to wonder why it was her father had sent her with him if she wasn't supposed to carry the money back after all.