“I’vebeenpolite. You’re the one that strung me up instead of saying ‘hello.’”
“And you’re the one who trespassed.”
I give him an exasperated look. “It’s not like you have a doorbell.”
“It’s almost as if I don’t want to be found.”
Something dawns on me. “Wait… you’ve been working with humans a lot longer than the past twenty years, haven’t you?”
I expect him to correct me—twentyEarthyears. A funny unit of measure since Earth doesn’t exist anymore. But the tiny atomic clocks all humans have embedded in our arms count time at the quantum level. Any holo-watch or info-pad can scan that chip and translate the time into units most familiar to us. The ICSS deemed this necessary, since inter-galactic travel comes with all sorts of… time-bendy stuff. Theory of relativity or whatever. You can go on a little vacation and return to your family a month younger than your twin. It’s weird. Our little underdeveloped human brains struggle with it. So: Earth years.
“Since well before Cataclysm Sol-Three,” he says.
We humans just call it ‘the cataclysm’. When Earth shattered into a million pieces and died a fiery death.
I do the math and snap my fingers. “Back when we were still under observation. So itwastrue. Therewereabductions.”
“Not abductions. Opportunities.”
I make a face. “Yeah, right.”
“Isn’t that why you’re here?” he says coolly. “For an…opportunity.”
I open my mouth to say something, then snap it shut. He’s right. I don’t have a leg to stand on here. “Why are you all so obsessed with milk, anyway?”
He laughs suddenly, as if I’ve caught him off-guard. The genuine pleasure in his tone makes me glower.
“What’s so funny?”
“You’rehereand you don’t knowthat?”
“I’ll confess I may have dozed off during the tapes once or twice.”
He smiles and tilts his head. “You call them ‘tapes.’”
“Yeah, so?”
“You would need to be far older to have been alive when Earth still used analog media.”
“My parents were. They were super into it. Had this big collection of VHSes and records, lots of vintage shit. I guess it was always normal to me.” I shrug.
He tilts his head the other way. “You volunteered information about yourself.”
“Was it not a genuine question?” I mock.
He raises a brow, then says slyly, “I didn’t ask a question.”
I snap my mouth shut again and bury my face in my tea.
He lifts two of his legs and clicks them together. “We—inter-vertebrates, that is—require a lot of calcium to form our exo-skeletons. Milk is a highly efficient source, so we crave it. Like mammals and sugar, I suppose. Lactation didn’t evolve on this planet. So it quickly became a coveted delicacy. Where there is demand…” He waves a hand. “Supply will follow.”
“Huh. And here I thought y’all were a bunch of sex freaks.”
The slow grin that spreads across his face exposes his fangs. “Who said we aren’t? Why do you think those black-market prices are so high?”
That image flashes through my mind again—mouths on my tits, sucking, groaning. I push it away.
We finish our tea quietly.
